"Shuffling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Sisson's machine sets out-but, my dear Sir, how you still talk of him! You seem to think him as grave and learned as a professor of Bologna—why, he is an errant, low, indigent mechanic, and however Dr. Perelli found him out, is a shuffling knave, and I fear, no fitter to execute his orders than to write the letter you expect. Then there was my ignorance and your brother James's ignorance to be thrown into the account. For the drawing, Sisson ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... time every man 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 drawn into the ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... are five miles from the sampan these festive mariners of the Kan-kiang have developed into shuffling, shirking gormandizers, who peer longingly into every eating-house we pass by and evince a decided tendency to convert their task into a picnic. Finding me uncomplaining in footing their respective "bills of lading" at the frequent places where they rest ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... they were confident of good treatment, and went about fearlessly. On seeing a gun, they laughed, and said, "Pooh! pooh!" to imitate its sound. One man danced, and was evidently anxious to repeat some nautical shuffling of the feet to the time of a fiddle, of which he had agreeable recollections, whilst another described how we slept in hammocks. After some time, a document was given them, to show any ship they might visit hereafter; and they were sent away in high spirits. The course they had taken, both ...
— Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal; • Sherard Osborn
... sisters were all hidden away from sight, having been frightened by Little John's words. Up the stone stair they ran, and a great sound of weeping was presently heard. After a while this ceased, and then came the scuffling and shuffling of men's feet as they carried a heavy weight down the steep and winding stairs. So they went forth from the nunnery, and, as they passed through the doors thereof, a great, loud sound of wailing arose from the glade that lay ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle
... clumsy quarry. The tamandua throughout most of its habitat rarely leaves the forest, and it is a helpless animal in the open plain. The two dogs ran ahead, followed by Colonel Rondon and Kermit, with me behind carrying the rifle. In a minute or two the hounds overtook the cantering, shuffling creature, and promptly began a fight with it; the combatants were so mixed up that I had to wait another minute or so before I could fire without risk of hitting a dog. We carried our prize back to the bank and hoisted it aboard ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... threshold as he was following his wife out of the room, Toodle returned and confronted Mr Dombey alone. He was a strong, loose, round-shouldered, shuffling, shaggy fellow, on whom his clothes sat negligently: with a good deal of hair and whisker, deepened in its natural tint, perhaps by smoke and coal-dust: hard knotty hands: and a square forehead, as coarse in grain as the bark of an oak. A thorough contrast in all respects, to ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... seen those two together—I met them at Victoria one evening after Goodwood. Old Kirkbank was shuffling on ahead, carrying Smithson with her, absorbing his attention by fussification about her carriage. Lesbia and that Cuban devil were in the rear. They looked as if they had all the world to themselves. Faust and Marguerite ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... was a shuffling of naked feet outside, and five or six young men entered the house, pushing before them an old man and a girl—Rime and his grand-child. In the centre of the room was a small square mat of coconut leaf—the Marshall Island ...
— Rodman The Boatsteerer And Other Stories - 1898 • Louis Becke
... Harley greeted them, shuffling over the road from the wharf as Father Blossom honked the horn and brought the car to a stop. "I'm just back from a trip to the island. Did ...
— Four Little Blossoms on Apple Tree Island • Mabel C. Hawley
... came shuffling into the room in a pair of old bedroom slippers. She had on a skirt that she used to go skating in, and a somewhat tumbled middy-blouse. Her hair was wopsed around her head anyhow—it really takes one of Rose's own words to describe it. ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... provided in the form of symbols from which an interpretation of the future can be made. It matters little what the method or nature of the symbols chosen is—dice or dominoes, cards or tea-leaves. What matters is that the person shaking the dice, shuffling the dominoes, cutting the cards or turning the tea-cup, is by these very acts transferring from his mind where they lie hidden even from himself the shadows of coming events which by his own actions in the past he has already predetermined shall occur in the future. ...
— Tea-Cup Reading, and the Art of Fortune-Telling by Tea Leaves • 'A Highland Seer'
... race. On the arrival of a ship from England an auction is generally held, and the various articles exhibited, damaged and sound, under the shade of some tree in the centre of the town; where an Englishman would be amused to see one of the first merchants shuffling round with a handful of tea, and telling the audience that it is just upon the rise, and recommending that he be allowed to send home a pound ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne
... blue denim overalls and a pair of shoes much too large for him; this latter item indicating a desire to get the most for his money, after the invariable custom of a primitive people. He carried a peeled catclaw gad in his right hand, and with this gad he continually urged to a shuffling half-trot some one of the four burros. This man ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... part of the Sacrament, and rage against men using an entire Sacrament? [Are they to take comfort in the fact that it is recorded concerning the sons of Eli: They will go begging? That will be a shuffling excuse at the judgment-seat of God.] If they make the prohibition in order that there should be a distinguishing mark of the order, this very reason ought to move us not to assent to the adversaries, even though we ...
— The Apology of the Augsburg Confession • Philip Melanchthon
... daughter of a banker, he might take an interest in the house of the father-in-law of his son; then again, if he disliked his choice, the major takes the key, double-locks his coffer, and Master Andrea would be obliged to live like the sons of a Parisian family, by shuffling cards or ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... and fled down the long stone walk. Silently, lightly as a ghost she passed, and crouched at the gate as she heard footsteps, her heart beating so loudly it seemed like a bell calling attention to her. An old man was shuffling past, and she shrank against the wall, yet mindful of the awful glass door back at the end of the narrow passage. If they should come now she could not hope ...
— Exit Betty • Grace Livingston Hill
... fronts of the palaces, gay stuffs were flung; the startled doves of St. Mark perched upon the cornices, or fluttered uneasily to and fro above the crowd. The baton of the band leader descended with a crash of martial music, the priests chanted, the charity-boys sang shrill, a vast noise of shuffling feet arose, mixed with the foliage-like rustling of the sheets of tinsel attached to the banners and candles in the procession: the whole strange, ...
— A Foregone Conclusion • W. D. Howells
... yesterday there was one who would give within 10000 of C.'s price and take the title as it was. C. is a fool or is shuffling. ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... began shuffling, and giving the cards, whilst M. de Tregars was examining the punch-drinkers at the ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau
... gasped after a final shuffling dash, as she caught sight of immaculate Gertrude, "I wore your overshoes. Hope you don't mind. They're not very wet inside, and I brought over your things so that we can move into our ...
— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz
... no further, and retreated to the wall, still shuffling his feet. His retreat was thus cut off, and seeing the lady awaited his reply with an involuntary smile, he dived into his right-hand pocket, from which he dragged a blue handkerchief, a knife, and a hunk of bread. He gazed on each in turn, and ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... percolated through all the currents of Paris life, so that wherever one goes, in every quarter and at every hour, among the busy confident strongly-stepping Parisians one sees these other people, dazed and slowly moving—men and women with sordid bundles on their backs, shuffling along hesitatingly in their tattered shoes, children dragging at their hands and tired-out babies pressed against their shoulders: the great army of the Refugees. Their faces are unmistakable and unforgettable. No one who has ever caught that stare of dumb bewilderment—or ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... say, wow! this here is sure getting mighty interesting!" muttered Giraffe, shuffling uneasily from one foot to the other; while Bumpus, filled with a sudden alarm, started back into the camp, to arm himself with his ...
— The Boy Scouts in the Maine Woods - The New Test for the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... 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
... slept. At two o'clock in the morning the lights in the gambling rooms of the Belmont and the Plaza were still flickering streams out into the desert night; weak strains of discord were being drummed out of a piano in a dance hall; the shuffling of feet smote the dead, flat silence of the night with an odd, weird resonance. Here and there a light burned in a dwelling or store, or shone through the wall of a tent-house. But Manti's one street was deserted—the only peace that Manti ...
— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer
... 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, ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... [shuffling the cards and talking at the same time]. For me there exists but one ideal. That which Tacitus described as it once prevailed among the old Teutons. Quamquam severa illic matrimonia nec ullam morum partem ...
— Moral • Ludwig Thoma
... of, or the act of drawing, the feet over the floor, as an insult to some one, or merely to cause disturbance; a shuffling ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... 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 it ...
— Baseball Joe in the Big League - or, A Young Pitcher's Hardest Struggles • Lester Chadwick
... thing was to be sure that everybody should be in the right place at the tea-table, and this the Widow thought she could manage by a few words to the older guests and a little shuffling about and shifting when they got to the table. To settle everything the Widow made out a diagram, which the reader should have a chance of inspecting in an authentic copy, if these pages were allowed under any circumstances ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... (There is the shuffling of footsteps from outside and five of the crew crowd into the cabin, led by JOE. All are dressed alike—sweaters, sea-boots, etc. They glance uneasily at the CAPTAIN, twirling their fur caps in ...
— The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays • Various
... gone, Schwalliger turned and winked slowly at the minions of the law, and went quietly into a corner with them, and there was the sound of the shuffling of silken paper. Later on he found the old man and returned him his ten, and went back to don ...
— The heart of happy hollow - A collection of stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... in the middle of his chant; the whole shuffling, grunting crowd was petrified in as many different poses. Birnier leaped to his feet waving ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... and talked too much, and when the rubber was over assuaged her discomfiture (though not mine—we had been partners) with a Welsh rabbit and a tumbler of something hot. We had done with the cards, but while she waited for this refreshment she sat with her elbows on the table shuffling a pack. ...
— The Patagonia • Henry James
... says Carmen, "if we only get safely through the patio and pass the guard! Put the sombrero over your face, imitate the zambo's shuffling gait, and walk carelessly by my side, as if you were conducting me to the gate and a short way down the street. Have you your dagger! Good! Open the door and let us go forth. One word more! If it comes to a fight, ...
— Mr. Fortescue • William Westall
... Shuffling down the long slope, its tired legs moving automatically, the drooping pony swerved a little and then came to a halt, trembling with fright. Startled out of his unpleasant ruminations, his lips tensing over his teeth in ...
— The Boss of the Lazy Y • Charles Alden Seltzer
... action came. The singing died away, the benediction was given, the second Gospel was read, the priest and the people repeated the Bohemian prayers, and all was over. The countless heads began to move onward, the shuffling of innumerable feet sent heavy, tuneless echoes through vaulted space, broken every moment by the sharp, painful cough of a suffering child whom no one could see in the multitude, or by the dull thud of some ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... the descent; sometimes on foot, sometimes shuffling on the ice; always proceeding much more quietly and slowly than on our upward way; and constantly alarmed by the falling among us of somebody from behind, who endangers the footing of the whole party, and clings pertinaciously to anybody's ankles. It is ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII - Italy and Greece, Part Two • Various
... dark by this time, and another night must be passed on board. Some were complaining of the cold. Others were shuffling their feet ...
— A Woman who went to Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... for Daumier appears in neither of these forms he sees it in Madame Chaboulard or Madame Fribochon, the old snuff-taking, gossiping portress, in a nightcap and shuffling savates, relating or drinking in the wonderful and the intimate. One of his masterpieces represents three of these dames, lighted by a guttering candle, holding their heads together to discuss the fearful earthquake at Bordeaux, ...
— Picture and Text - 1893 • Henry James
... for her brother at that moment. Her eyes were fixed unswervingly upon the figure in the once-white drill trousers and bobbed swallow-tail coat and shuffling boots. She was staring from wide and, Caleb noted, rather horror-stricken eyes at the huge steel trap above the blanket pack. But the boy who must have received her glance full in his face had not faltered ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... and fire as well as any man, and she stood with the gun firmly held in her strong young arms, and pointed towards the door. For one breathless moment—which seemed a year—they waited. The growl sounded nearer, and a swift shuffling of clumsy feet told them that some ponderous animal was approaching. The next instant the ...
— Marguerite De Roberval - A Romance of the Days of Jacques Cartier • T. G. Marquis
... begun to grow exciting, and the fascination of the pursuit took full possession of my imagination. I saw Plummer pass across the end of the street in company with a shuffling, out-at-elbows-looking man with dirty brown whiskers, and I set myself to watch the door of the staircase by the packing-case maker's with redoubled attention, hoping fervently that Mayes might emerge, and so give me the opportunity of capping the extraordinary ...
— The Red Triangle - Being Some Further Chronicles of Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison
... embarrassed too; for the baby in her arms prevented her getting at her pocket handkerchief to wipe the perspiration from her brow and pulling her bonnet on to its proper position on her head. The man beside her was also greatly embarrassed, and kept shuffling his large hob-nailed shoes together, and turning his hat round and round ...
— Zoe • Evelyn Whitaker
... one might travel the length and breadth of the land and never find his match, or run across his equal. Imagine a medium-sized, chicken-headed, tow-haired sort of man with mild blue eyes, and a mouth nearly from ear to ear, who walked with a shuffling, half-apologetic sort of a gait, and who, when his countenance was in repose, resembled an idiot. For hours he would sit in his chair, twisting his hair in little ringlets. Then I used to say, "Bill is studying up some new devilment." His clothes were always ...
— Forty Years a Gambler on the Mississippi • George H. Devol
... more agreeable, that is, less intolerable than that of the musicians. The dances of the men, which are always separate from those of the women, are conducted very nearly in the same way, except that the men jump up and down instead of shuffling; and in the war dances the recitations are all of a military cast. The harmony of the entertainment had nearly been disturbed by one of the musicians, who thinking he had not received a due share of the tobacco we had ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
... the wind that through the window came. And sometimes in the silence she Would mumble a sentence audibly, Or shake her head as if to say, "You silly souls, to act this way!" And never a sound from night I would hear, Unless some far-off cock crowed clear; Or her old shuffling thumb should turn Another page; and rapt and stern, Through her great glasses bent on me, She would glance into reality; And shake her round old silvery head, With—"You!—I thought you was in bed!"— Only to tilt her book again, And rooted ...
— Collected Poems 1901-1918 in Two Volumes - Volume I. • Walter de la Mare
... "Shuffling will do you no good," said this fierce warrior, who seemed to be always trying to swallow something—perhaps his wrath. "The lady has placed her interests in my hands; I demand the only reparation ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... remember a couple of sentences in the later editions of the "Origin of Species" in which Mr. Darwin directly admits a change of opinion as regards the main causes of organic modification. How shuffling the first of these is I have already shown in "Life and Habit," p. 260, and in "Evolution, Old and New," p. 359; I need not, therefore, say more here, especially as there has been no rejoinder to what I then said. Curiously ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... trucks stretched along the highway in slow-moving lines as far as the eye could see. Bells were ringing, whistles tooting, horns blowing, motor-cars honking, newsies shouting. The grinding of car-wheels, the rattle of carts, the clatter of hoofs on the asphalt, the shuffling of feet on the sidewalk, and a thousand other noises combined to make an indescribable and confusing roar. The noise and bustle ...
— The Secret Wireless - or, The Spy Hunt of the Camp Brady Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss
... were about one and a half times the apparent diameter of the bow in length, maintained a vertical posture all the way across, and slipped swiftly along as if they were suspended like a curtain on rings. Had these lively auroral fairies marched across the fiord on the top of the bow instead of shuffling along the under side of it, one might have fancied they were a happy band of spirit people on a journey making use of the splendid bow for a bridge. There must have been hundreds of miles of them; for the time required for each to cross from one end of the ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir
... aisle to the door of the sacristy, where they waited till the singing ceased. The priest's deep voice spoke a few words alone, the nuns and pupils answered, and so again, through the short Responsory; and after a moment the soft shuffling of many felt-shod feet on the stone pavement was heard as the sisters and girls left the ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... appeared more cheerful and better-tempered than they usually seem to be. Jokes were bandied freely between tradesmen and customers, and kindly greetings exchanged in honour of Christmas. Occasionally, it is true, a shivering creature would be seen shuffling along through the busy crowd, glancing with furtive hungry eyes at the food exposed for sale, but unable to buy even a loaf of bread. The generality, however, had anticipated the coming festive season, and had saved the wherewith ...
— Little Pollie - A Bunch of Violets • Gertrude P. Dyer
... the stiff shuffle of the men something rather familiar. We have seen them before—just for a few minutes it is true; but under circumstances that impressed some of their characteristics upon us. The very last we saw of them they were shuffling away in the darkness along a railroad track, after promising that eventually they would wreak dire vengeance upon Billy, who ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... already seated herself at the table and was shuffling a pack of cards. "Fifty-cent reading?" she asked, as he ...
— The Girl and The Bill - An American Story of Mystery, Romance and Adventure • Bannister Merwin
... manners, apt at present to be slapdash and independent, and decidedly lacking in "that repose which stamps the caste of Vere de Vere". Gwen could never keep still for five seconds, her restless hands were always fidgeting or her feet shuffling, or she was twisting in her chair, or shaking back a loose untidy lock that had escaped from her ribbon. Gwen often did her hair without the aid of a looking-glass, but when she happened to use one the reflection of ...
— The Youngest Girl in the Fifth - A School Story • Angela Brazil
... word spelt balade. It really means a dance-song. For ballads were at first written to be sung to dances—slow, shuffling, balancing dances such as one may still see ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... the darkest part of the cave—that close down by where the slope came from above—the boys thrust the lanthorn and tinder-box on one side and began to scoop away at the deep, loose sand near the wall. Then, shuffling themselves down something after the fashion of a crab upon the shore, they cast the sand back over their legs and then over their breasts and faces, closing their eyes tightly, and finally shuffling down their arms ...
— Cormorant Crag - A Tale of the Smuggling Days • George Manville Fenn
... he had not much heart to talk; but he kept the two eldest with him until little Flora's head dropped, heavy with sleep, on his breast. Then a sudden thought seemed to strike him, and he sent them, almost hurriedly, away. He had scarcely done so when there was a shuffling noise in the hall, the parlor-door was flung open with a jar, and David ...
— Scottish sketches • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... In the bazar the noise is deafening from the screams of the disputing parties, and the vociferating of prices by those who have articles for sale. It is a sort of Babel in miniature, where Jews and brokers push by you every instant, hastily shuffling along, and loaded with some piece of second-hand finery to be put up at auction; such as, for instance, an incense salver, a piece of Persian silk, an Albanian rifle, an old silk or velvet robe, embroidered with gold, the property of some ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo
... started up from shuffling and throwing a book of cards. "Look't me. If Jest Prebol's shot most daid by a woman, look't me. Do you know me—where I come from, where the hell I'm goin'? Yo' bet you don't. I've been shanty-boatin' fifteen years, but I ain't always been a shanty-boater, no, I haven't. Talk ...
— The River Prophet • Raymond S. Spears
... 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 ...
— Ancient Art and Ritual • Jane Ellen Harrison
... the hot place was a lot of merry devils laughing and shouting, with an old pack of greasy cards—it reminded me of them we used to play with at the Rendezvous—shuffling them to the time of the Devil's Dream, and Money Musk; then they'd deal in slow time, with the Dead March in Saul, whistling as solemn as medicine-men. Then they broke out sudden with Paddy O'Rafferty, which made this hoss move about in his moccasins ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... occupied now, shuffling, cutting, and laying out her rows with quick nervous movements of her worn little hands. She glanced once more at her husband as he entered, and then ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... new one to Ferris. His eyes followed the trio of puppies shuffling ringward. He saw that all three were on leather leashes and that their chains had been left in the stalls. Presumably there was a law against chains in the ring. And ...
— His Dog • Albert Payson Terhune
... interruption. The cursed paper was four days old, so I put it down; and as I stood looking at nothing out of the window, I heard Baldwin going on with your Jew. They had a load of papers on the table, which Baldwin kept shuffling, as he talked about the losses the house had sustained by the sudden death of Alderman Coates, and the sad bankruptcy of the executors. Baldwin seasoned high with compliments to the Jew upon his known liberality and generosity, and was trying to get him to enter into some security, which the Jew ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... passionately in favor of the latter course. The party fortunes could not possibly be retrieved without a general shuffling of the cards, and an opportunity for some wholly fresh combination ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... to the inn, love, and the lights and the fire, And the fiddler's old tune and the shuffling of feet; For there in a while shall be rest and desire, And there shall the ...
— Chants for Socialists • William Morris
... and up went Neddy's heels. "Crack—crack— crack," went the stick again, and up went Neddy's heels four, five, six times over. But the donkey had this time met with his match, and, in spite of his kicking and shuffling, Harry sat him like a hero. 'Tis true that he was bumped all sorts of ways—right and left—on to the donkey's neck—on to his crupper, and was several times nearly off, but never quite; so that at last Neddy gave up in despair, submitted to ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn
... in a group before the hotel when a man was seen approaching them with shuffling steps. Uncle John looked at him closely and Mumbles leaped from Patsy's lap and rushed at the ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces and Uncle John • Edith Van Dyne
... train shed one morning early in March, watched such a line go by. She watched it with interest. She had developed a new interest in people during the year she had been away. She had seen, in the army camp, similar shuffling lines of men, transformed in a few hours into ranks of uniformed soldiers, beginning already to be actuated by the same motive. These aliens, going by, would become citizens. Very soon now they would appear on the streets ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... anywhere, (for we had no passengers;) and I will own there was a pleasant feeling of superiority in being able to walk the deck, and eat, and go about, and comparing one's self with two poor, miserable, pale creatures, staggering and shuffling about decks, or holding on and looking up with giddy heads, to see us climbing to the mast-heads, or sitting quietly at work on the ends of the lofty yards. A well man at sea has little sympathy with one who is seasick; he is too apt to be conscious of a comparison ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... readers that some curious results should follow from his shuffling. We will enable him to ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... poured in at the window until it made the little wainscoted parlour like an oven, but still for me it only lit up one pair of eyes. The voices sounded more and more like those of a dream; the scratching of pens and shuffling of feet were, to my ears, as distant murmurs of the sea, until the coroner's voice ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... as it sounded in his ears. Now he sat on his bedside again, feeling that this was indeed a true forecast of his own doom. The sun seemed already shut out from him in the morning of his day, the prison silence settling, never to be broken again in those shadows where shuffling men filed by, with eyes downcast and faces gray, like the ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... 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 the knob of the door. Apparently ...
— Molly McDonald - A Tale of the Old Frontier • Randall Parrish
... by torchlight, and now and then a revolver shot, there had been added the inciting music of stringed instruments, cymbals, and such—some in dance measures, some solo, while immediately at hand sounded the shuffling stamp of ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... in the screen consulted his watch. "Probably inside of an hour. We've had to do some re-shuffling; you know how these things are handled. And if you'll pardon me, Literate; just what are you doing at Pelton's? I understood that you were principal ...
— Null-ABC • Henry Beam Piper and John Joseph McGuire
... tongue, 'I ask pardon of Allah.'" So the Governor took him out of jail and carried him to the Court (he being still in bilboes) and, approaching the Caliph, kissed ground before him. Quoth the King, "O Emir Khalid, what seekest thou?"; whereupon he brought forward Ahmad Kamakim, shuffling and tripping in his fetters, and the Caliph said to him, "What! art thou yet alive, O Kamakim?" He replied, "O Commander of the Faithful, the miserable are long-lived." Quoth the Caliph to the Emir, "Why hast thou brought ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... there arrived a prisoner, driven in on foot by a mounted Cossack, sent back by the officer commanding the reconnoissance party which had captured him. He came up the street, shuffling at a quick walk to keep ahead of the horse and the thin, sinister Cossack—an elderly farmer, in work-stained clothes, with the lean neck and pursed jaws of a hard bargainer. In all his bearing and person there was evident the man of toilsome life who had prospered a little; in that soldier-thronged ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various
... excursions, we might suppose some varieties, which had the skin of the webbed intervals of their toes less developed, to succeed best in walking on the land, and in the course of several generations they might exchange their present gait or manner of shuffling along and jumping by aid of the tail and their fin-like extremities, for feet better adapted ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell
... he was forced to explain, shuffling the while uneasily in his chair and dropping his whip, "one naturally takes an interest in one's friends' welfare. You and Maurice are the best friends I have in Loango. I often speak to Maurice about it. It isn't as if there was an English garrison, or anything like ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... interrupted by the tolling of a bell. As we stood surprised and listening, it was succeeded by the sound of many feet trooping up the stairs and shuffling by the door of our room. Both, I believe, had a great curiosity to set it open, which each, owing to the presence of the other, resisted; and we waited instead in silence, and without moving, until Romaine returned and bade ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... did," retorted Phemie pertly. But here a pushing of chairs and shuffling of feet in the kitchen checked her. Clementina fixed an abstracted gaze on the ceiling; Phemie regarded a leaf on the window sill with photographic rigidity as the door opened to the strangers and ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte
... a worse poison for good ears, the shrill venom of the women. Out of the gates she blindly went, and all the pack opened their music upon her. Stones flew, but words flew faster and stuck more deep. The mob, as she blundered through the streets, shuffling, gasping, stumbling at her caught gown, dry-eyed, open-mouthed, panting her terror, her bewilderment, her shame and amaze—the mob, I say, dizzied about her like a cloud of wasps; yet they had in them what wasps have not—voices primed by hatred ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... twinkle that had disconcerted so many political meetings. Two lean fellows, rather alike, with lined faces and bitten, drooped moustaches, were the next to come through the yard gate. They halted behind Gaunt, touching their forelocks, shuffling a little, and looking sidelong at each other. And Malloring waited. Five past four! Ten past! Then ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... mystery of the brother came rushing over him and he yielded himself again to the wonder of the situation till he was reawakened to realities by the shuffling of feet on the stairway and the raised tones of Mrs. Deo as she tried to make herself understood by her new and somewhat difficult guest. A maid followed in their wake, and from some as yet unexplored region below there rose the sound ...
— The Chief Legatee • Anna Katharine Green
... boat and proceeded to the inn, he was directed upstairs by the landlord, who was an enlarged and coloured edition of his brother. From the other side of the gymnasium door came an unceasing and mysterious shuffling sound. ...
— The White Feather • P. G. Wodehouse
... appearance Halleck was rather below the medium height and well built: in walking he had a rather slow and shuffling gait, as if something afflicted his feet; a florid, bland and pleasant countenance; a bright gray eye; was remarkably pleasant and courteous in conversation, and, as a natural consequence, much beloved by all who had the pleasure of his acquaintance. But to that brilliancy in conversation ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... Tarzan stood silently listening. At first he detected no sounds other than those of the city that came to him through the window overlooking the lake; but presently, faintly, as though from a distance he heard the shuffling of padded feet along a stone pavement, and as he listened he was ...
— Tarzan the Terrible • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... woman did not rise at once. She did not readjust her thoughts readily; she seemed to be waiting in the chance of seeing some one. The surgeon did not come out of the receiving room; there was a sound of wheels in the corridor just outside the office door, followed by the sound of shuffling feet. Through the open door she could see two attendants wheeling a stretcher with a man lying motionless upon it. They waited in the hall outside under a gas-jet, which cast a flickering light upon the outstretched form. This was the next case, which had been waiting its ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... forward two paces, glaring defiantly at Dolores, waiting for men to follow. An uneasy shuffling of feet was his only answer for a moment; then his eyes shifted with cooling ardor at sight of Dolores. For a breath after he had ceased speaking, the girl stood like a splendid statue, except for the glitter of her eyes and a slight ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... but the growing excitement took the form of a shuffling of feet. The Judge deliberately lighted his pipe, a token of mental relaxation. Then from out the haze of blue smoke, like the voice of an oracle from the seclusion of a shrine, issued the familiar recitative tone for ...
— An Alabaster Box • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Florence Morse Kingsley
... how well I squeeze The well-packed cards in shuffling. Ecarte, whist, I never missed, A nick the broads[106] while ruffling. Mogul or loo, The same I do, I am ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... talk once more and wildly. The sense of it dawned on me. She was calling Goliath. He came shuffling from his usual hiding place—the curtains. A diverting little monster. I bear him no ill will. Although I grow slightly envious of his madness. Yet his madness is a terrific flattery. It is involved and piquant and one of the things that remain for me to study ...
— Fantazius Mallare - A Mysterious Oath • Ben Hecht
... threshold and called the owner by name. There was a shuffling sound in an inner room and the scraping of a match. A minute later a door was opened and an old woman stood in the aperture, fully dressed and carrying a ...
— The Velvet Glove • Henry Seton Merriman
... 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 ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... into the mouth of a large creek that flanks it on the left. In the profound hush of things, every sound on either shore was distinctly heard. A large bed of ducks were feeding over on the Maryland side, a mile or more away, and the multitudinous sputtering and shuffling of their bills in the water sounded deceptively near. Silently we paddled in that direction. When about half a mile from them, all sound of feeding suddenly ceased; then, after a time, as we kept on, there was a ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... constitutional; gait, step, carriage; sidewalk, mall; ambulatory. Associated Words: ambulant, ambulatory, ambulatorial, peripatetic pedometer, odograph, gradient, gravigrade, stilts, shambling, shuffling, locomotion, alure. ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... and musicians slowly, with shuffling steps. The quiet is broken by a note on a gong, struck softly, and there is an almost inaudible flute melody on reeds, and liquid notes struck on empty bamboos. These dusky figures are Kachin men, with red ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... a silent meal with Wardlaw. When I returned I must have fallen asleep over a pipe, for the next thing I knew I was blinking drowsily at the patch of sun in the door, and listening for footsteps. In the dead stillness of the afternoon I thought I could discern a shuffling in the dust. I got up and looked out, and there, sure enough, was some one coming down ...
— Prester John • John Buchan
... which involve prolonged standing and so induce the condition of flat foot: waiters, hall-porters, hawkers, policemen, shop-walkers, salesmen, and station officials are examples. But the waiter's gait is characteristic—a quick, shuffling walk which enables him to carry liquids without spilling them. This man walks with a long, swinging stride; he is obviously not a waiter. His dress and appearance in general exclude the idea of a hawker or even ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman
... its stifling dust while their driver hung to his mules' heads by the bits. More than once they caught from some gentle rise a backward glimpse of long thin lines puffing and crackling at each other; oftener and more and more they heard the far resound of artillery, the shuffling, clattering flight of shell, and their final peal as they reported back to the guns that had sent them; and once, when the ladies asked if a certain human note, rarefied by distance, was not the hurrahing of boys on a school-ground, the old man said no, it was "the Yanks charging." But never, moving ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... suffice to give you the bewildering details; mountains of diplomatic letters, orders, telegrams, truths, half-truths, shuffling, cutting and stacking; you go confusedly from palace to people, prince to pauper, university to prison pen—all the way from Waterloo to Versailles, where William I received at last his great ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel
... in the hall. The deputies poured out in a disorderly mob into the corridors, while the ushers passed the white metal urn along the tiers of seats. The corridors were full of the sound of shuffling feet, and of shouting and gesticulating people. Grave looking young men and excited old ones went passing by. The air was pierced with the sound ...
— Marguerite - 1921 • Anatole France
... nothing," answered the 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 ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... a thrilling silence, during which one might almost have heard the boys' hearts beat as the doctor paused, and with his piercing eyes glanced up and down the long rows of awe-stricken boys. For a moment no one moved. Then there was a stir, a shuffling of feet, and Regie Selwyn, with cheeks aflame, rose slowly in his seat, and said in a low ...
— Bert Lloyd's Boyhood - A Story from Nova Scotia • J. McDonald Oxley
... of the shady side yards stood Kent, turning the crank of a hand-organ! He was facing the highway where the other two boys were, but not a trace of recognition was in his face. Ranged in a semicircle before him was a line of little children shuffling their toes to ...
— Three Young Knights • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... 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 ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... 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 ...
— Ridgeway - An Historical Romance of the Fenian Invasion of Canada • Scian Dubh
... their dreams to those who are left, that long night's march in the desert. It was like a dream itself, the silence of it as they were borne forward upon those soft, shuffling sponge feet, and the flitting, flickering figures which oscillated upon every side of them. The whole universe seemed to be hung as a monstrous time-dial in front of them. A star would glimmer like a lantern on the very ...
— The Tragedy of The Korosko • Arthur Conan Doyle
... those rough, boisterous Western spirits out in front. Before her parting lips uttered a line she had thoroughly mastered them, the innate purity of her perfected womanhood, the evident innocence of her purpose, shielding her against all indecency and insult. The ribald scoffing, the insolent shuffling of feet, the half-drunken uneasiness, ceased as if by magic; and as her simple act proceeded, the stillness out in front became positively solemn, the startled faces picturing an awakening to higher ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... the 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 Ruagh's place ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor
... candles (for the murder-trial had lasted far into the evening) that loomed through it and wore a sickly halo; the red robes and red face of my lord judge opposite that stared through it and outshone the candles; the black crowd around, seen mistily; the voice of the usher calling "Silence!"; the shuffling of the jurymen's feet; the pallor on their faces as I leant forward and tried to read the verdict on them; the very smell of the place, compounded of fog, gaol-fever, the close air, and the dinners eaten earlier in the day by the crowd—all this strikes home ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... good one in point of numbers, and a pleased and interested one. His peculiar manner of reading a few pages, and then shuffling his papers, as though they were inextricably mixed, was embarrassing at first, but when it was found that he was not disturbed by it, and that it was not the result of an accident, but a characteristic manner of delivery, the audience withheld its sympathy and rather enjoyed the ...
— A Backward Glance at Eighty • Charles A. Murdock
... kennel, you two," said Black Beard. And Dick heard the crushing under foot and the kicking aside of broken china, and a shuffling of two ...
— Ambrotox and Limping Dick • Oliver Fleming
... meeting not a man was in sight; a great silence seemed to have stifled life itself. But as Koppy raised himself on a slight eminence in the centre of the clearing and made a gesture with his expressive hands, throngs of his followers crowded about him with no sound but shuffling feet. ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan
... heads of the five greatest jewel houses in New York were assiduous in their search for that copperplate superscription in their daily mail. On the morning of the eighth day it came. Mr. Latham was nervously shuffling his unopened personal correspondence when he came upon it—a formal white square envelope, directed by that same copperplate hand which had directed the boxes. He dropped into his chair, and opened the envelope with eager ...
— The Diamond Master • Jacques Futrelle
... world's honors to-day must not be overtrained mentally or physically; not, as John Randolph said of the soil of Virginia,—"poor by nature and ruined by cultivation," hollow-chested, convex in back, imperfect in sight, shuffling in gait, and flabby in muscle. The work of such a man will be musty like his closet, narrow as the groove he moves in, tinctured with the peculiarities that border on insanity, and out ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... for us, and we mounted them, the animals kneeling at the word of command for us to do so. Our party, six in number, was divided so that four persons, including the driver, rode on each elephant. They were large and docile creatures, being respectively seventy and ninety years of age. Their shuffling, flat-footed tread is peculiar, but not very unpleasant, except when the driver hurries the animals; but even then the gait is not nearly so trying to the rider as is that of the camel, which is only comparable ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... a long heavy thrusting-spear, and the third, an exceeding tall man, bore a long broad-bladed war-sword. Thus they went, brown of skin beneath their flower-garlands, their long hair bleached by the sun falling about their shoulders; high they strode amongst the shuffling carles and tripping women of the later-come thralls. But when they heard the music, and saw that they were coming to the Gate in triumph, strange thoughts of old memories swelled up in their hearts, and they refrained them not from weeping, for they felt that the joy of life ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris
... 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 ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 - Edited by Sir Edward Howard Marsh • Various
... he heard the shuffling of feet. Men were carrying out the prisoner. With feeble anger he brushed aside the hand of a cuirassier who was trying to staunch the ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... shuffling sound from a near-by office. He straightened stiffly, wondering dully who the newcomer was. The watchman probably, on a round of inspection. Or perhaps Jonathan, who came to his office sometimes of ...
— The House of Toys • Henry Russell Miller
... at the moment of the Shah's departure, which was now close at hand. The clatter of the horses, the shouts of men, the passing to and fro of lanterns, all announced the close of the scene; and to my delight I heard a corresponding shuffling of women's slippers and voices making for the steps of the terrace. I had placed myself behind the wall, so as to be seen by those only who had a knowledge of the premises, and I flattered myself that Zeenab, ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... him when he stood up to sing at our concerts—his tight little figure stepping to and fro, and his feet shuffling to the air, his eyes seeking and bestowing encouragement- -and to have enjoyed the bow, so nicely calculated between jest and earnest, between grace and clumsiness, with which he brought each song to a conclusion. He was not only a great favourite among ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... laugh, Maverick withdrew, and a few moments later was shuffling along in the direction of the mines intent upon the work of destruction assigned to him, his face distorted with mingled fear and rage, his usually dull eyes gleaming with ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour
... speaking the sound of many shuffling feet was heard along the passage, and the room was soon half filled with colored people come in to deal with ...
— Hidden Hand • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... Chinese, dressed just as the Bobbsey twins had seen them in pictures, with his shirt outside his trousers, came shuffling along, carrying big trays from which ...
— The Bobbsey Twins in the Great West • Laura Lee Hope
... up when the two conspiring freshmen took their places as near the door as seats could be found. The biting wintry air permeated the big auditorium, and when the restless shuffling of feet had finally come down to a murmur of soft sporadic shiftings—some girls never could keep their feet still— then the dean, Miss Rutledge, made ...
— Jane Allen: Junior • Edith Bancroft
... when his work was done, and made his way towards the Vicarage. It was barely nine o'clock, but the little house seemed already to be in darkness. He rang twice before anybody answered him. Then he heard slow, shuffling footsteps within, and a tall, gaunt man, in clerical attire, and carrying a ...
— The Malefactor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... learn, would be lemon soup and frosted cake. Mrs. Sullivan's response, though audible only to her mistress, who was compelled to cock an intent ear toward the kitchen, seemed to be in some manner shuffling or evasive. ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... of thought, and, to escape from it, he went into Beevor's room and fetched the documents he had mentioned—at least they would keep him occupied until it was time to go to his club and lunch. He had no sooner settled down to his calculations, however, when he heard a shuffling step on the landing, followed by a knock at Beevor's office-door. "More work for Beevor," he thought; "what luck the fellow has! I'd better go in and explain that he's ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... and Trask heard him shuffling to his own room, expressing some opinion in a whisper which Trask could not make out, except that it was to the effect that he hadn't started this "walkin' round like ha'nts in ...
— Isle o' Dreams • Frederick F. Moore
... poverty. In fine, the things of earth would not mate with those of heaven, being sundered by a great original gulf through a difference in nature; inasmuch as mortal man was infinitely far from the glory of the divine majesty. With this shuffling answer she eluded the suit of Balder, and shrewdly wove excuses ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... heard a shuffling tread of slippered feet along the corridor; and she forced herself not to look up until she was conscious that a shapeless figure in a dressing gown filled the doorway, like a badly painted portrait too large for ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... had now pushed his hat very far back from his forehead. He removed it, still quite abstractedly, and retired with long, shuffling strides ...
— Girls of the Forest • L. T. Meade
... with heart and tongue, "I ask pardon of Allah."' So he carried him, still chained, to the Divan and kissed the earth before the Khalif, who said to him, 'O Amir Khalid, what seekest thou?' Then he brought forward Ahmed Kemakim, shuffling in his fetters, and the Khalif said to him, 'O Kemakim, art thou yet alive?' 'O Commander of the Faithful,' answered he, 'the wretched are long-lived.' Then said the Khalif to the Amir, 'Why have thou ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume III • Anonymous
... too sure of that," cried the hag, disabling him for the moment, by a severe blow on the arm from her staff. And shuffling off with an agility which could scarcely have been expected from her, she passed through a gate near her, and ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... a round shallow tray, 40 centimeters in diameter and usually of plaited rattan strips with a rim of thicker rattan. It is held in both hands and by a series of shuffling motions, which are better seen than described, accompained[sic] by a peculiar movement of the thumb of the left hand, the chaff and the little broken fragments of rice are thrown off into another receptacle for the ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... preceding his wedding was an Auld Licht ever known to stay out after ten o'clock. So weekly conclaves at street-corners came to an end at a comparatively early hour, one Coelebs after another shuffling silently from the square until it echoed, deserted, to the town-house clock. The last of the gallants, gradually discovering that he was alone, would look around him musingly, and, taking in the situation, slowly wend his way home. On no other night ...
— Auld Licht Idyls • J.M. Barrie
... can be painted, and of every size, from six inches high to six feet. The crowd wear their gayest kimonos, and the moosmes are brilliant in flowered or striped silks and splendid sashes, and the air is full of the rattle of the shuffling clogs and the tinkling samisen played in almost ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Japan • John Finnemore
... 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 ...
— The New Hudson Shakespeare: Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare
... preparing to defend it by shuffling a note-book out of her pocket, and ruffling the leaves over: "Listen to this"—and she read—"'A tinge of red in the hair denotes strength and energy of character and good staying power.' We don't want a muff for a tutor, do we? There are born muffs enough in the family ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... walked on, all these noises combined together into a piece of elaborate music whose harmonious phrases came persuasively through a great disorderly murmur of voices and shuffling of feet on the gravel of that open space. An enormous crowd immersed in the electric light, as if in a bath of some radiant and tenuous fluid shed upon their heads by luminous globes, drifted in its hundreds round the band. Hundreds ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... the rear, far behind, just emerging from the scrub, are seen those who, from their wandering habits, must wear the bracelets, hurrying and shuffling along with a rattle of chains, tripping up in their eagerness to be even with their mates in the scramble for water: presently they pause to look about and neigh—a delay resented by those behind by a friendly bite, answered by a kick; which starts ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... quickly, involuntarily, to her dishevelled hair; and at the same moment the little lady, as though making a bolt from captivity, stepped down from the verandah and came shuffling across the yard towards her, almost ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... 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 bitterness. ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... way along a street unkempt and dreary, Mr. Tiernan scrutinizing the numbers until he paused in front of a house with a basement kitchen and snow-covered, sandstone steps. Climbing these, he pulled the bell, and they stood waiting in the twilight of a half-closed vestibule until presently shuffling steps were heard within; the door was cautiously opened, not more than a foot, but enough to reveal a woman in a loose wrapper, with an untidy mass of bleached hair and a puffy face like a ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... orders or his correspondence. If there was secret antipathy, Washington showed himself possessed of almost superhuman patience and self-restraint, for certainly if ever man's patience was tried Washington's was by the shuffling conduct of his lieutenant at this time; but if aversion there was on Washington's part he resolutely put it away from him in the interest of the common cause, feeling, no doubt, that Lee was a good soldier who might yet ...
— The Campaign of Trenton 1776-77 • Samuel Adams Drake
... ominous murmur of voices, a shuffling of feet in the gallery, a silence, which was like the silence before a storm. Anna, who had sung the first verse of her song, looked around the house, a little surprised at the absence of the applause which had never yet failed her. She realized in a ...
— Anna the Adventuress • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... cards he had been shuffling. The statement seemed to warrant his action. He sat back in his chair and bit a chew of tobacco off a black plug. Minky and the others sat round and stared at the little man with ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... greater part of the observations made that evening, were interrupted by Mrs. Micawber's discovering that Master Micawber was sitting on his boots, or holding his head on with both arms as if he felt it loose, or accidentally kicking Traddles under the table, or shuffling his feet over one another, or producing them at distances from himself apparently outrageous to nature, or lying sideways with his hair among the wine-glasses, or developing his restlessness of limb in some other form incompatible with the general ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... 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 |
