"Stunt" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... celery stalks at once, from the base to the foliage. "Necker said something nice to me tonight. You might have thought the management would say something, but not they." She looked at Fred from under her blackened lashes. "It WAS a stunt, to jump in and sing that second act without rehearsal. It ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... before yesterday that's the way I'd a-talked my own self, but now I know better. What about your little stunt? Wasn't that warm enough for you? Didn't guns pop enough? Don't you ...
— Crooked Trails and Straight • William MacLeod Raine
... teach their men to care for their feet and they must know how to care for their own. But the naval officers feel no such necessity, simply because their men do not have to demonstrate their efficiency by practice marches, and they themselves do not have to do a stunt that will show up their own ignorance and inefficiency ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... me to begin this long chronicle of a quahaug's pilgrimage. Perhaps it is fitting that Asaph should end it. He dropped in for a call the other afternoon and, as I had finished my day's "stunt" at the desk, I assisted in entertaining him. Frances was in the sitting-room also and Hephzy joined us soon afterward. Mr. Tidditt had stopped at the post-office on his way down and he had the Boston morning paper in his hand. Of course he was filled ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... his sleep. Others were snoring loudly. I lay awake for a long time, staring into the black darkness of the marquee. Suddenly—it must have been two or three o'clock in the morning—the familiar rumbling noise broke out in the distance. It seemed to spread along the whole horizon. The "stunt" ...
— Combed Out • Fritz August Voigt
... tenderest feeling, but it is also the most heroic and desperate fighter in behalf of the loved one. Here we are face to face with the contradictions that we always meet when we personify a quality or make an abstraction. Love may do the most hateful things; love may stunt, the character of the lover and the beloved. In other words, love, tender feeling, must be conjoined with intelligence, good judgment, determination and fairness before it is useful. It would be a nice question to determine just how much ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... it any year for one or two dollars? But I prefer the double blade. I want one thick, stunt edge for knots, deers' bones, etc. and a fine, keen edge for ...
— Woodcraft • George W. Sears
... pictorial argument against the alleged joys of small-boat sailing. Possibly that is what Cloudesley and I thought, that sombre, leaden morning as we turned out to cook breakfast and wash decks. The latter was my stunt, but one look at the dirty water overside and another at my fresh-painted deck, deterred me. After breakfast, we started a game of chess. The tide continued to fall, and we felt the sloop begin to list. We played on until the chess men began to fall over. The list increased, and we went ...
— The Human Drift • Jack London
... tends to develop the frame according to the normal standard. It may not be as good as gymnastics in this direction: but it has this advantage that it trains the pupil to engage in his work in such a manner as not to hinder nor stunt the development of his body, and not to cramp the vital organs in such a manner as to interfere with the discharge of their functions. The pupils are taught to use both hands and to develop both sides of the body. The following chart from Herr Salomon's work will show to what degree the body may ...
— A Plea for the Criminal • James Leslie Allan Kayll
... thinks! It's the way she acts that counts. Everybody in Jumpoff has got invitations to her picnic and dance. They say it's to pay us for the piano—and they think she's doing some wonderful stunt. And we're left out in ...
— Rim o' the World • B. M. Bower
... is named for Citheron who was a poet, and regalis refers to a king. You mustn't touch it or you may stunt wing development. You watch and don't let that moth out of sight, or anything touch it. When the wings are expanded and hardened we will put it ...
— A Girl Of The Limberlost • Gene Stratton Porter
... Siegfried Sassoon then, do you? Well, tell him from me that the more he lays it on thick to those who don't realize the war the better. That's the stuff we want. We're fed up with the old men's death-or-glory stunt." In 1918 appeared 'Countermans' Attack': here there is hardly a trace of the 'paradise' feeling. You can't even think of paradise when you're in hell. For Sassoon was now well along the way of thorns. How many lives had he not seen spilled apparently to no purpose? ...
— Counter-Attack and Other Poems • Siegfried Sassoon
... does it.' Some, often those who indulged inordinately and more secretly than their companions, gravely condemned the practice as sinful. A few seemed to think there was 'no harm in it,' but that the habit might stunt the growth and weaken the body if practiced very frequently. The greater number made no attempt to conceal the habit, they enlarged upon the pleasure of it; it was 'ever so much nicer than eating ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... commissioner—a Stunt Sahib, in that district, called Yunkum Sahib. Aha! He was hard-hard even as is the Sahib who, without doubt, will give me the shadow of his protection. Many eyes had Yunkum Sahib, and moved quickly through his district. Men called him ...
— Soldiers Three • Rudyard Kipling
... light there, too, then turned it off. He sat down at the edge of his bed. How was it in the stories? Oh, yes! The cub always started out on an impossibly difficult business stunt and came back triumphant, to be made a member of the ...
— Personality Plus - Some Experiences of Emma McChesney and Her Son, Jock • Edna Ferber
... the castle. She was persuaded the minx was a sly one, and would carry tales. So judged mistress Amanda Serafina Fuller, after her kind. Nor was it wonderful that, being such as she was, she should recoil with antipathy from one whose nature had a tendency to ripen over soon, and stunt its slow orbicular expansion to the premature and false completeness of a narrow ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... down, you may as well do your stunt and have it over, Elsie," she remarked. And Elsie, standing back a little, repeated the performance in a manner that was ...
— Elsie Marley, Honey • Joslyn Gray
... such great forest conflagrations as are frequent and ruinous in Western America and by no means unknown in the south of Cape Colony. But these fires doubtless injure the younger trees sufficiently to stunt their growth, and this mischief is, of course, all the greater when an exceptionally dry year occurs. In such years the grass-fires, then most frequent, may destroy the promise of the wood ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... look here, Tim, you're not going to overdo it," said the former moving-picture actor, warningly. "If we are going to pull this stunt off you are going to keep perfectly sober. It's one ...
— Dave Porter and His Double - The Disapperarance of the Basswood Fortune • Edward Stratemeyer
... public medium may mean nothing—on the part of a psychic like your friend Mrs. Harris it means a very great deal. In support of this, let me tell you of a similar case. I have a friend, a perfectly trustworthy woman, and of keen intelligence, whose 'stunt,' as she laughingly calls it, is to impersonate nameless and suffering spirits who have been hurled into outer darkness by reason of their own misdeeds or by some singular chance of their taking off. My friend seems to be able in some way to free these poor ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... open-faced countenance of yours would give you away even if your tongue didn't. I'd say you weren't a bit in love with Lynch, or any of the rest of the bunch, either. Likely you got a good reason, an' of course it ain't any of my business; but if that stunt with the red-hot branding-iron is a sample of their playfulness, I should think you'd drift. There must be plenty of peaceful jobs open in ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... by the stars," suggested Toby, eagerly. "I saw you taking their positions about the time we crept in for a snooze. I must learn how to tell the hour of the night by the heavens before we finish this camping trip. It must be a great stunt, I should think, Jack." ...
— Jack Winters' Campmates • Mark Overton
... "I might do the clergyman stunt myself in those parts. I've got some stuff. A bit of the old Wesley—'Quiet harbourage from the turmoil of city life, my dear lady. An occasional hour in your beautiful ...
— Men of Affairs • Roland Pertwee
... that, in the early terrible days of the war, our thoughtful Press, wishing to make money out of public hysteria, had the bright idea of turning this simple, devoted woman into a spy. There was not a pressman who did not laugh in his sleeve at this and openly make a stunt of it, but it had its political uses; and, after the Russians had been seen with snow on their boots by everyone in England, the gentlemen of the Press calculated that almost anything would be believed if it could be repeated often enough. ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... Connecticut. Remember how he crossed swords with Mr. Scully touching the alleged dangerous nature of the ostrich and the early domestication of the peacock. So far as I know, the bittern thing has no voice at all. His real stunt is as follows. He puts his beak down into the swamp, in search of insects and snails or other marine life—est-ce que je sais?—and drawing in the bog-water through holes in his beak, makes a booming sound ...
— Four Americans - Roosevelt, Hawthorne, Emerson, Whitman • Henry A. Beers
... glimpse of an actress named Beth Norvell. I was never more thoroughly surprised in my life than when you first came out on the stage. For a moment it knocked me silly. Say, you're an artist all right, my girl. That was a great stunt. Why, those boys down below hardly breathed until you disappeared. You ought to get a chance in Chicago; you 'd be wearing diamonds. Damned if I was n't honestly proud ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... one theater regularly, for the habitues are often invited to come upon the stage on "amateur nights," which occur at least once a week in all the theaters. This is, of course, a most exciting experience. If the "stunt" does not meet with the approval of the audience, the performer is greeted with jeers and a long hook pulls him off the stage; if, on the other hand, he succeeds in pleasing the audience, he may be paid for his performance and later ...
— The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets • Jane Addams
... mysteriously. "You've got to find that out for yourself, boys. All I can tell you is that he's an Englishman, and she has known him for a long time—kind of love stunt, I imagine. She wasn't having any, but now he's at death's door she seems to have relented. Anyway, she is breaking every engagement she's got, giving up her chairmanship of the War Hospitals Committee, ...
— The Box with Broken Seals • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the black bronc' this morning, and bein' as no female woman ever pulled off a stunt like it in these parts, they reckoned it might not make you mad if they told you you was ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders on the Great American Desert • Jessie Graham Flower
... his daily stunt of practice, but was heightened mightily in spirit by noticing in the hangar where he had usually gotten his machines a bright new scouting plane, small, with a tail like a dolphin's, an up-to-date machine gun mounted along the ...
— Our Pilots in the Air • Captain William B. Perry
... "is to be strawberries. I want to raise strawberries. Mr. Marsh, on the Longmeadow Farm, has offered to give me some plants. I'll do the corn stunt; aren't you going ...
— The Library of Work and Play: Gardening and Farming. • Ellen Eddy Shaw
... through the whistling stunt," Will announced. "My, but that fellow on the engine has faith; or else the system's down real fine in these parts! He won't be back for a week. Those woolly-headed porters are going to save up his commission and hand it to him when he brings the down-train in! The game's good: ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... he came, accoutred as he was,—coatless, hatless, but not latherless, nor towelless. Like the rest of us, his only thought was to see those sheep do their "stunt." With glasses in hand, we watched them descend those perilous heights, leaping from point to point, finding a foothold where none appeared to our eyes, loosening fragments of the crumbling rocks ...
— Camping with President Roosevelt • John Burroughs
... a simpleton. The hat-box was fairly burnt to ashes: so were the notes. That hat-box, my dear fellow, is a different one; and those notes belong to me. I even burnt six of them to make you swallow the stunt. And you couldn't make out what had happened. What an owl you must be! To furnish me with evidence at the last moment, when I hadn't a single proof of my own! And such evidence! A written confession! Written before witnesses!... Look here, ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... gang won't let you slip back after the three months. They took a extra shine to me because I did the prize-pupil stunt; but they won't let anybody slip back if they give 'em half a chance. When they got me sound again, did they ship me back to the shipping department in the sub-basement? Not muchy! Looka me now, little missy! Clerk in their biggest display; in three months a raise to ninety dollars. Can ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... "Is that a real stunt, Dolly?" and Alicia looked at her curiously. "Do you really want to go on the stage? ...
— Two Little Women on a Holiday • Carolyn Wells
... of mine for making a dash at the hut containing our weapons won't work, Dick. We could never force our way through this crowd. I must try another stunt." ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood
... yourself down to me. You, and nobody else, has made the establishment what it is. I never had a head for the little things that count. That's why I spent my best years down in Twenty-third Street. What did I know about the big little things!—the carriage-call stunt and the sachet-bags in the lining and the blue and gold labels, all little things that get big results. I never had a head for the things that hold the rich trade, like the walking models, or ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... handless hand laundry. I can make it stand out like the colonel of the Forty-fourth Regiment at a Little Mothers' Bazaar. And I've seen you work. I know what you can do with the other part. But business is business. How much do you get a week for the stunt you do now?" ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... statement of the 17th H.L.I.'s first raid is to the lay mind singularly unimpressive, but behind it there is an interest and a measure of glory of which the 17th is happy to be proud. Let it be remembered that it was their first "stunt," their first real hand to hand brush with the enemy, and that to the 17th fell the honour of getting the first "jab in" ...
— The Seventeenth Highland Light Infantry (Glasgow Chamber of Commerce Battalion) - Record of War Service, 1914-1918 • Various
... Stoddard my one-man and no-horse farm—you know, the automatically cultivated ten-acre stunt I've been frivoling with. A lot of changes have been made that have been waiting a week for me to see tried out. I've been too busy. And after that, I'm going to take him over the colony—what do you think?—five ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... eleven or twelve years, did get the boyes forth with her into the market-place, and make them wheele, falling on their hand turning their heeles upward, whome she would followe and wheele so herself, all the fort over." From which it would appear that she could easily "stunt" the English ...
— Historic Girls • E. S. Brooks
... blush of conscious virtue your enormities I see: And I wish that a reversal of the laws of gravitation Would prevent your vicious current from contaminating me! With your hedonists who grovel on a cushion with a novel (Which is sure to sap the morals and the intellect to stunt), And the spectacle nefarious of your idle, gay Lotharios Who pursue a mild flirtation in a ...
— Lyra Frivola • A. D. Godley
... "Sleight of hand," she said. "A damned fool stunt. I figured to put the money back in a day or so. If somebody else hadn't been working the same racket, they'd never have caught me. But ...
— Modus Vivendi • Gordon Randall Garrett
... That is all people were doing back in 1938 when the Martians landed in New Jersey, at the time Orson Welles presented a radio version of H. G. Wells' 'War of the Worlds'. Or when the 'Flying Saucer' craze first started. Or when Fantafilm put on their big publicity stunt for the improved 3-D movie, 'The Outsiders', and people saw the aliens over Broadway and heard them address the populace in ...
— The Fourth Invasion • Henry Josephs
... [Footnote 26: They stunt my mental growth. A man should not accept another man's conclusions, but merely use them as steps ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... bring beer instead. No fault of mine, Max," he added, "if Jan comes down here and eats your cheese. He's a cheese lunatic. Blame Tony. He comes into my studio, does a Pied Piper stunt on his fiddle and the ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... set. I had been marked as something out of the usual in the restaurant which from three to four in the afternoon at that time of the year is the most fashionable in London. Now, a woman like my lady does not flirt. If you glance at her under favorable conditions, such as my strawberry "stunt" had created for me, she will return the glance. You both half smile and do not look at each other again that afternoon. That is not flirting. Splitting hairs, we ...
— The Secrets of the German War Office • Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves
... for the current ran very swift off the high hills, and contained several rapids where two of the men—yes, and once all four of them—had to shove with poles. They constantly chewed sections of sugar-cane cut from an armful that had been tossed in at Pena Blanca. Charley tried the same stunt, and found that the sugar-cane juice was ...
— Gold Seekers of '49 • Edwin L. Sabin
... detective," said Russ. "A sort of mechanical shadow. While you were busy with the stock market stunt, I made several of them. One for Wilson and another for Chambers and still another for Craven." He hoisted and lowered the one in his hand. "This ...
— Empire • Clifford Donald Simak
... brilliant, thoroughly unscrupulous, absolutely without honour. He did the 'Great White Way' stunt—the restaurants, the roof gardens, a pretty actress at times, jewels and champagne. Because of his uncertain habits, he never had an office of his own. He always operated through others. His earning power was a gift of ...
— The Winning Clue • James Hay, Jr.
... returned from Cornwall and Switzerland. Provincial companies enjoyed—a little anxiously owing to uncertain receipts at the box office—a brief license on the boards of famous play-houses. The newspapers had exhausted the stunt of the silly season and were at their flattest and most yawn-provoking. The South African War had reached ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... grin lighted the small man's dark, unwholesome face. "It's a fine detective stunt, and besides it means twenty dollars per column and mebbe a 'boost.' I can't wait, you can't wait! It's up to us to strike now! If these men knew you have their names they'd hike for Texas or the high seas. Come now! Everybody tells me you're one of these ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland
... beady little eyes as keen and cold as flint, he said: "Buell, Leslie knows you daren't harm the kid; an' as fer bullets, he'll take good care where he stings 'em. This deal of ours begins to look like a wild-goose stunt. It never was safe, ...
— The Young Forester • Zane Grey
... "Killican." The stream here flows over a lava bottom and is quite wide, in places very deep and in places quite shallow. There seemed to be quite an area of this shallow water. The shallow places suddenly dropped off into pools of great depth, and it was something of a stunt to wander around on the shallow bed rock and cast off into the pools below. I tried it and found the lava as smooth ...
— Out of Doors—California and Oregon • J. A. Graves
... a dark aerodrome and the ceaseless drum of guns—neither the time, the place nor the ideal accompaniment to philosophy, you might think. Blackie was as nervous as a squadron commander may well be who has sent a party on a midnight stunt, and finds three o'clock marked on the phosphorescent dial of his watch and not so much as a single machine ...
— Tam O' The Scoots • Edgar Wallace
... in the dickens are you doing out here in the mines, by all that's holey?—and what's all this story in the Goldite News about one Bronson Van Buren doing the benevolent brigand stunt with you and your maid, and shunting Searle off with the Cons? Why couldn't you let a grubber know you were hiking out here to the desert? Why all this elaborate surprise—this newspaper wireless to your fond ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... number six thousand four hundred and twenty-one!" interrupted Tom, with a laugh. "Now if you're going to start on your interrogatory stunt, Georgie my lad, you'll make this run alone. I'm not going to get dry in the roof ...
— Tom Fairfield's Pluck and Luck • Allen Chapman
... by several. Growing alarmed, the ringmaster took to his heals and disappeared in the direction of the dressing-tent, whence his young victim had already gone. Then the band struck up, and the manager of the show sent out the clowns to do an extra stunt to quiet ...
— Out with Gun and Camera • Ralph Bonehill
... of yours that pulled us through, Joe," declared McRae. "That stunt you pulled of whirling on your heel and shooting it over to third was a pretty bit of inside stuff. And there wasn't anything slow either about spearing that ball that ...
— Baseball Joe Around the World - Pitching on a Grand Tour • Lester Chadwick
... to the beauty of American women does not lie, as the writer of the Post contends, in an overworking of the physical system which shall stunt and deform; on the contrary, American women of the comfortable classes are in danger of a loss of physical beauty from the entire deterioration of the muscular system for want of exercise. Take the life of any American girl in one of our large towns, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... interest suddenly replaced the shipping clerk's rather disgusted expression. Anything was welcome which promised to relieve the monotony of this society stunt, as he had termed Mr. Stafford's invitation. It was against his will that he had come at all. Why should he do this millionaire the honor of dining with him? What was he to him? Because he was rich? Well, he guessed not. If he had ...
— Bought and Paid For - From the Play of George Broadhurst • Arthur Hornblow
... for the whistle to blow; and one has a hammer, with which he will knock, and one tells a story of woe; and one, if requested to travel a mile, will measure the perches and roods; but one does his stunt with a whistle or smile—he's The Man Who Delivers the Goods. One man is afraid that he'll labor too hard—the world isn't yearning for such; and one man is always alert, on his guard, lest he put in a minute too much; and one has a grouch or a temper ...
— It Can Be Done - Poems of Inspiration • Joseph Morris
... miles an hour with two small guns peering out of each side. It was the first tank! We all thought at first it was an armored car of some kind. Then it swung off the road, crossing a ditch 8 feet wide and 17 deep and when we saw it perform this stunt our faculties were for the moment spellbound, and then we ...
— S.O.S. Stand to! • Reginald Grant
... propounded, like, "Which would you prefer, to be as green as you look or to look as green as you are?" When the conversation touched on the birthstone for March, some one suggested that Mary ought to be made to do some stunt to show that she was worthy to wear a bloodstone, since it ...
— The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware • Annie Fellows Johnston
... whisper, or just nod your head each time you open a new bottle, as it makes it appear as though you were accustomed to ordering wine. You see, Jim, that's where I go off my dip. That wine affair is an awful stunt for a fellow who makes not over two thousand a year, carries ten thousand life, and rooms in a flat that's fifteen a month stronger than he can stand. But to continue, I lost the push I started out with, and got mixed up with a fellow named Thorne, or Thorpe, ...
— Billy Baxter's Letters • William J. Kountz, Jr.
... and inward, as well as from obvious and external causes; and female education does its best to weaken every physical counterpoise to this nervous mobility—tends in all ways to stimulate the emotional part of the mind and stunt the rest. We find girls naturally timid, inclined to dependence, born conservatives; and we teach them that independence is unladylike; that blind faith is the right frame of mind; and that whatever we may be permitted, and indeed encouraged, to do to our brother, our ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley
... the world, which must be done by some one, if human beings are to live at all; it had only been the outcome of the needlessly elaborate life of a highly organised community. It had filled his life full of a futile intellectual toil. And then, the effect upon his own character had been to hamper and stunt his natural energies. It had given him ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... acquaintance in the sunshine and flowers. Since the war failed me again, I can see that my friends pull away from me. They doubtless think that no one is more worthless than a prophet who cannot pull off his 'stunt' and has short gray hair in the bargain. Everyone is blissfully lolling in the embraces of enduring tranquillity and I am seeking the companionship of trees and birds that are not troubled with the machinations and delusions ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... avocation is also wise. A student must not forget that he is something more than an intellectual being. He is a physical organism and a social being, and the well-rounded life demands that all phases receive expression. We grant that it is wrong to exalt the physical and stunt the mental, but it is also wrong to develop the intellectual and neglect the physical. We ...
— How to Use Your Mind • Harry D. Kitson
... though. You ought to have seen me moving from Oregon. The old delivery wagon was heaping full." Her laugh this time was spontaneous. "And old Kate couldn't make more than ten miles a day. But I had a good tent, and when she had done her day's stunt, I just tied her out to feed and made camp. The hardest was keeping track of the goats, but the flock was small then, and I had ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... that the letters have arrived, and, if they do, my newspaper stunt will fool 'em," ...
— Jack of the Pony Express • Frank V. Webster
... as I said, there's a chance to get into print. Some sort of a newsboys' benefit bunch is going to get together Sunday night and give a little entertainment fer the kids up in Beals' gymnasium on the Bowery. They're callin' for volunteers among the actors. You take your monologue stunt down there and get onto the program. The newspapers always plays up this newsboy dope strong and you'll get a good mention sure. Clip the notices and then you've ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... that just hung round camp, grinning and giggling and playing the goat, as half-grown dogs will. He used to go along with the car-boys when they went swimmin' in the resevoy, an' dash along in an' yell an' splash round just to show off. He thought it was a keen stunt to get some gesabe to throw a stick in the resevoy so's he could paddle out after it. They'd trained him always to bring it back an' fetch it to whichever party throwed it. He'd give it up when he'd retrieved it, an' yell to have it ...
— A Deal in Wheat - And Other Stories of the New and Old West • Frank Norris
... amended: "Out of our sight, you'd be on our nerves, forever pulling the Popinot stunt, springing some dirty surprise on us. But here, ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... a dainty out of your pocket once in a while and give an animal a nibble, always makes a hit with the audience. That's about all it's good for, yet it's a good stunt. Audiences like to believe that the animals enjoy doing their tricks, and that they are treated like pampered darlings, and that they just love their masters to death. But God help all of us and our meal tickets if the audiences could see behind the scenes. Every trained-animal turn would be taken ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... you had sense enough to know that this should be kept quiet! She's pulled this stunt before, and we always managed to quiet things down before anything happened! We've managed to keep everything under cover and out of the public eye ever since she was fifteen, and now you blow it all up out of proportion and ...
— A Spaceship Named McGuire • Gordon Randall Garrett
... greatest case my detective agency has had since I left the police force eleven years ago. It's too big for me, and I've come to you to do a stunt as is a stunt. You will plug it for me, won't you—just as you've always done? If I get the credit, it'll mean a fortune to me ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... that Western regalia makes him water-logged; he's a terribly long while down there! Didn't he look like the hero in a moving-picture feature? We've given him the water-cure, but he will do that same stunt over again. That sunny-souled ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... contains much uncommon sense, which our lady-readers cannot ponder too often. All honor to those mothers who, meeting extreme and unexpected poverty, turn themselves into drudges that their children may be decently clothed and wholesomely fed! But dishonor to those women who stunt their own intellectual powers, which should educate and accompany the immortal souls of their sons and daughters through this world and perhaps another,—and this, in order that their bodies may be fed luxuriously, or dressed in lace and ruffles ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... "I should have to explain, but I know you won't tell. This is going to be my piece de resistance, my grand stunt. I'm going to bring it off the last night." She stopped long enough for Verrian to revise his resolution of going away with the fellows who were leaving the middle of the week, and to decide on staying to the end. "I am going ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... never made more of a hit with you. I've never been downtrodden enough. I didn't need feeding or nursing. I've always sort of cherished the feeling that I liked to be the one creature you didn't have to carry on your back. I thought that to stand behind you was a pretty good stunt, but you've never needed anything yet to fall ...
— Outside Inn • Ethel M. Kelley
... that time to learn this, I have to spend some more time learning to remember that I have remembered. Isn't it the awful stunt!" ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt
... we'd be wild at having it delayed a minute longer than necessary," the President insisted, and Tom added his usual exhortation, "Run the thing along briskly; don't let it drag. You can 'put over' lots of stupid stuff by rushing it on gayly, and a good 'stunt' may be good for ...
— Ethel Morton's Holidays • Mabell S. C. Smith
... operator in the office, accepted the invitation. What happened is described by Adams as follows: "We gathered up a couple of sounders, a battery, and sonic wire, and at the appointed time called on her to do the stunt. Her school-room was about twenty by twenty feet, not including a small platform. We rigged up the line between the two ends of the room, Edison taking the stage while I was at the other end of the room. ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... through. There's another sixty-foot swim, and at the end of it you've got to dive at least twelve feet and bring up from the bottom a dead weight of not less than ten pounds and swim ten feet carrying that weight. I tell you, Father, that's quite a stunt! And then, besides all the swimming stuff, you've got to show that you're Johnny-on-the-spot in throwing a life-buoy, to say nothing of a barrel of tests in first aid, and in splicing and knot-tying of nearly ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Life-Savers • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... I can find To stop this car colliding stunt Is cutting off the end behind And likewise ...
— Alice in Blunderland - An Iridescent Dream • John Kendrick Bangs
... Something's gone wrong with the darned thing. My private impression is that, without knowing it, I've worked that stunt that Sargent and those fellows pull—painting the soul of the sitter. I've got through the mere outward appearance, and have put the child's soul ...
— My Man Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... ordered me to do the airship stunt for his picture, because Nance Holden isn't here to-day," ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Out West • Edith Van Dyne
... has been child welfare, not child age, and will be able to use much of the old literature, simply substituting for "factory" the word "school" when condemning "hazardous occupations likely to sap [children's] nervous energy, stunt their physical growth, blight their minds, destroy their moral fiber, and fit them for ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen
... if they got off before the next station they must have landed on their heads, because Sixteen was making up time and Shorty pulled the throttle wide open at the first yank, I should judge, from the way he jumped out of town. I've been expecting some of them to go and do their filing stunt—and if the boys have begun to devil them any, the chances are good that they'd take turns at it, anyway. They'd leave someone always on the ground, that's ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... women do the work fairly well, with the aid of a few territorials, who guard the railway two hours each night and work in the fields in the daytime. The women here are used to doing field work, and don't mind doing more than their usual stunt. ...
— On the Edge of the War Zone - From the Battle of the Marne to the Entrance of the Stars and Stripes • Mildred Aldrich
... tracks will be in a grass plot in the centre. For the sake of keeping tracks off that avenue he would deprive people of attractive homes at a small cost, of the good air they can get beyond the heights; he would stunt the ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... referred to above were not in any way stunt performances to pile up a handsome aggregate of hours, but were the ordinary flying routine of the station to which the ships were attached, and most of the hours were spent in escorting convoys and hunting for submarines. In ...
— British Airships, Past, Present, and Future • George Whale
... Norman camp a stir of suppressed excitement and slightly apprehensive anticipation was apparent during the three days' training, in conjunction with the remainder of the 86th Brigade, for the big stunt. They rapidly grasped, after a hitch during the first day, what was required of them, attaining on the completion of the rehearsals a strong confidence in their powers ...
— Norman Ten Hundred - A Record of the 1st (Service) Bn. Royal Guernsey Light Infantry • A. Stanley Blicq
... regular sus-stunt of his, this rescuing people from drowning," muttered Springer. "Hear them yell! Bah! What fools people are! Why didn't I think quick enough to get ...
— Rival Pitchers of Oakdale • Morgan Scott
... Gloria. You can laugh it off as a publicity stunt and get them laughing with you. Who knows, it might even stop this mad fad of career women having babies without a proper home and ...
— Mother America • Sam McClatchie
... outlines of its form in large and noble lines. The skeleton has grown and clothed itself with flesh with almost incredible rapidity in the hundred years of its existence. But it is still young. We should avoid any measures which would stunt or deform its growth and should allow it to develop freely and generously till the full-grown American nation stands forth pre-eminent among the nations of the earth, in size, as well as in character and organization, and man's last experiment in government ...
— Practical Argumentation • George K. Pattee
... we were making a grand rush to get Homer into bed before he passed in altogether. Neither Leonidas nor me looked for him to last more'n an hour or two after that stunt, and we were thinkin' of taking him back in a box. But after he got his breath he didn't say much except that he was plumb tired. We were still wonderin' whether to send for a doctor or the coroner, when he rolls over with his face to the wall and goes to sleep as comfortable as ...
— Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... the Guru was sitting in that wonderful position. She had read the article in the encyclopaedia about Yoga right through again this morning, and had quite made up her mind, as indeed her proceedings had just shown, that Yoga was, to put it irreverently, to be her August stunt. He was still so deep in meditation that he could only look dreamily in her direction as she approached, but then with a long sigh ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... "I know it was Carlisle who held me up. I take it he figured that you'd actually put money in that package. Wouldn't be surprised if it was him that you got to try that stunt. An' he started away with the package as soon as he got it instead of sneakin' back home to split with you. He double crossed you an' you double crossed him an' me. Now I'm double crossing ...
— The Coyote - A Western Story • James Roberts
... short 'nough. It seems he an' ol' Koleta, an' a young Cheyenne buck, had been hangin' 'round across the river from Dodge fer quite a while waitin' fer Le Fevre to pull off some sorter stunt. Maybe I did n't get just the straight o' it, but anyhow they held up a paymaster, er something like that, fer a big boodle. They expected to do it quiet like, hold the off'cer a day er so out in the desert, an' then turn him loose to howl. But them plans did n't just exactly work. ...
— Molly McDonald - A Tale of the Old Frontier • Randall Parrish
... build up a concept of the framework wherein psi seems to function," I told him casually, just as if it were all a formularized laboratory procedure. "I had to pull last night's stunt to ...
— Sense from Thought Divide • Mark Irvin Clifton
... just done an abbreviated stunt for the Los Angeles High School the afternoon before Christmas. The occasion was a big ad., but they ripped matters through in a hurry, because the social event of the trip came that afternoon—Lillian Arnold's reception at her home ...
— Stanford Stories - Tales of a Young University • Charles K. Field
... exciting," Carol exclaimed to her new confidante, Vida Sherwin. She saw that in the growing quiet her voice had carried across the room. Nat Hicks, Ella Stowbody, and Dave Dyer were abstracted, fingers and lips slightly moving. She knew with a cold certainty that Dave was rehearsing his "stunt" about the Norwegian catching the hen, Ella running over the first lines of "An Old Sweetheart of Mine," and Nat thinking of his popular parody on Mark ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... could think of a good excuse to knock on her door. It 'ud be a stunt, wouldn't it, to raise an alarm of fire in this old tinder-box. Say, if there's ever a fire I bags the new roomer to save—that is until I get a look at her. If it's over a hundred and fifty, I'll give ...
— The Deaves Affair • Hulbert Footner
... his eyes and mouth wide open. "Well, what do you know about that." He sat looking from one to the other of them, dazedly, for a space; then he resumed: "Say, I thought there was something queer about that stunt of hers!" ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Investigator • John T. McIntyre
... you oppose us and act ugly about this fete, gentlemen, we shall be obliged to put a few bullets into you, and decide afterward what disposition to make of the girls. About the best stunt we do is shooting. We can't work; we're too poor to gamble much; but we hunt a good bit and we can shoot straight. I assure you we wouldn't mind losing and taking a few lives if a ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces and Uncle John • Edith Van Dyne
... preachers sit upon the platform and smile while Billy thus slangs the devil; and being themselves, poor fellows, at their wits end to draw the crowd, they watch and see how he does it, and then return to their own churches and try the same stunt; so the manners of the baseball diamond spread like a contagion. I open my morning paper, and find a picture of an intense-looking clerical gentleman, the Rev. J. Whitcomb Brougher, pastor of the Baptist Temple. He ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... special channels: the formation of habits involving executive skill, definiteness of interest, and specific objects of observation and thought. But the comparative view is not final. The child has specific powers; to ignore that fact is to stunt or distort the organs upon which his growth depends. The adult uses his powers to transform his environment, thereby occasioning new stimuli which redirect his powers and keep them developing. Ignoring this fact ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... smelled the food for her benefit and told her, "It's pork and beans." He held it out to her again. "I stole it from a patrol warehouse a few weeks back. It sure does smell good, doesn't it? You like the smell of that, don't you?" But she still wasn't convinced that this wasn't a patrol stunt to get hands on her and haul her back to a mausoleum. He couldn't blame her. He slowly pushed himself to his feet and walked to a spot about ten feet from where he had been, and still about twenty feet from her, and put the can ...
— The Happy Man • Gerald Wilburn Page
... thing," acknowledged Tony. "But I don't. He decides everything and gives all the orders—without consulting me. I just have to see that what he orders is carried out, and trot about with him, and do the noble young heir stunt for the benefit of the tenants on my ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... business. The exigencies of their circumstances have made the American people a commercial people; but whereas in England a commercial life may not offer scope for any intellectual activity and may even have a necessary tendency to stunt the mentality of any one engaged in it, business in the United States offers exercise to a much larger gamut of abilities and, by its mere range and variety, instead of dwarfing has a tendency to keep ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... is a controversy about the use of our public schools. Whenever a harassed editor in Fleet Street cannot think what to put in those two spare columns, he works up a 'stunt' on the use or otherwise of the public schools. This is always exciting, as the public schools hardly ever see the controversy, being blissfully immersed in the military strategy of Hannibal or the political intrigues of the Caesars. Thus the controversy ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... some May-apples, too. It was a great stunt ... well, no more May-apples and strawberries this year," he finished, with a sigh, and we both sat silently smoking, thinking over the good Summer ...
— October Vagabonds • Richard Le Gallienne
... can have it already combined with hydrogen in the remains of modern or fossil vegetation. The synthetic products on which modern chemistry prides itself, such as vanillin, camphor and rubber, are not built up out of their elements, C, H and O, although they might be as a laboratory stunt. Instead of that the raw material of the organic chemist is chiefly cellulose, or the products of its recent or remote ...
— Creative Chemistry - Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries • Edwin E. Slosson
... It's beyond the old man, Doctor. No spiritual side to him: only a sort of classical side that goes down with his own set. Besides, he's done, gone, past, burnt out, burst up; thinks he is our leader and is only our rag and bottle department. But you may depend on me. I will work this stunt of yours in. I see its value. [He begins moving towards the door with Conrad]. Of course I cant put it exactly in your way; but you are quite right about our needing something fresh; and I believe an election can be fought ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... Cadwalader Stunt, the well-known Colorado mining magnate, who recently purchased the Isle of Rum, has announced his intention of contesting the Elgin Burghs in the Liquid Paraffin interest. At a political meeting at Lossiemouth last week he held the attention of a crowded ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 15, 1914 • Various
... cried. "And I was picturing some skulking murderer lying in wait to pounce on me at the first opportunity. And here it was only poor little Microby who happened along, and with her natural curiosity pawed over everything in the cabin, and then decided it would be a grand stunt to cook herself a meal and eat it at my table—and I haven't the least doubt that she arrayed herself in one of my dresses when she did it." Patty hummed a light tune as, water pail in hand, she made ...
— The Gold Girl • James B. Hendryx
... host confided the price of three of them to him. The messenger honorably returned, the pennygrabs were bisected with the new knife, and all of them but Merle smoked enjoyably. He, going back to his candy and lemon, admonished each and all that smoking would stunt their growth. It seemed not greatly to concern any of them. They believed Merle implicitly, but ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... Ted. "Ought to have a suit of ermine. Proper stunt, too. Let me put it, Cora; I'll be the court crier. Come on and let's squat on the bank like the rest. Judge, you ought to be the most elevated. Now, then, here's the dope: Did Edison really ever do anything much to help with ...
— Radio Boys Cronies • Wayne Whipple and S. F. Aaron
... student, the ideal attention-sustainer is an interest in the matter presented. If, however, he cannot get up any absorbing interest in the subject-matter at once, he may generate the necessary motive force by taking the lesson as a "stunt", as something to be mastered, a spur to his self-assertion. In the old days, fear was often the motive force relied upon in the schoolroom, and the switch hanging {258} behind the efficient teacher's desk was the stimulus to sustained attention. ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... family attained to patriarchal dimensions. The natural result has been that the birth-rate has suffered a serious and prolonged check in France. It seems certain that the First Consul foresaw this result. His experience of peasant life must have warned him that the law, even as now amended, would stunt the population of France and ultimately bring about that [Greek: oliganthropia] which saps all great military enterprises. The great captain did all in his power to prevent the French settling down in a self-contained national life; he strove to stir them up to ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... lock and stole a blank direction sheet for the card stunts. They then had a printer run off 2300 copies of the blank. The next day they picked the lock again and stole the master plans for the stunts — large sheets of graph paper colored in with the stunt pictures. Using these as a guide, they made new instructions for three of the stunts on the duplicated blanks. Finally, they broke in once more, replacing the stolen master plans and substituting the stack of diddled instruction sheets ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... has cost me a hundred bones and all the skin on my knees," groaned Morgan, "and I can hardly walk. Damn his eyes. But say, Dan"—and his eyes glowed with an admiration which made him momentarily forget his pains—"that was some circus stunt you done down the road there—that changin' of saddles on the run, I never seen ...
— The Untamed • Max Brand
... four miles east out from Sanitobia on Mr. Hayshaws place. What I told you is what I know. He said he was sold that one time. Hubbards had plenty to eat and wear. He was a boy and they didn't want to stunt the children. Papa was a water boy and filed the hoes for the chopping hands. He carried a file along with them hoeing and would sharpen their hoes and fetch 'em water in their jugs. Aunt Sallie, his sister, took ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... message of thanks to everyone concerned," said Mr. Tommy Doremus. "I don't know whether he put Lady Betty at the top of the list or not, and if that's the way you feel about our nice little stunt, I expect it's just as well not to ...
— Lady Betty Across the Water • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... pretty quiet bout the place. They had to do their own cooking. They got for the grown ups 3 pounds meat, 1 pk.[TR:?] meal a week. They fed the young chaps plenty so they wouldn't get stunted. They keep em chunky till they get old nough to grow up tall and that make big women and big men. They stunt em then when they start runnin' up, it cause em to be low. The owners was mighty careful (not)[HW: ?] to feed the chaps nough to eat so they ...
— Slave Narratives: Arkansas Narratives - Arkansas Narratives, Part 6 • Works Projects Administration
... "Monkey," in this case being a man, does as beautiful a piece of work as I know of. I have never seen a back somersault upon a high wire. I have never heard of it before. There may be whole generations of artists gifted in this particular stunt. You have here, nevertheless, a moment of very great beauty in the cleanness of this man's surprising agility and sureness. The monkey costume hinders the beauty of the thing. It should be done with pale blue silk tights against a cherry velvet drop, or else in deep ultramarine ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... any of them loaded. That would be a fool stunt." Shelton had pulled the starting handle of a motor-generator and its rising whine ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... arrows, though." He said this in the tone of one who throws out a suggestion and he stopped to study the faces of his fellow conspirators. Equally they expressed horror and disgust. "All right," he said with equanimity. "I see you're like all human nature. You're determined to pull off this caveman stunt, but you want to do it with every appearance of chivalry and generosity. You're saving face. All right! I'm agreeable—although personally I think the quickest way the most merciful. Has ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... ever held a scanty and penurious justice to partake of the nature of a wrong. I held it to be, in its consequences, the worst economy in the world. In saving money I soon can count up all the good I do; but when by a cold penury I blast the abilities of a nation, and stunt the growth of its active energies, the ill I may do is beyond all calculation. Whether it be too much or too little, whatever I have done has been general and systematic. I have never entered into those trifling vexations and oppressive details that have been falsely and most ridiculously ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... have," he exclaimed, "because I recognized your fine hand in Joe's attitude toward me, the very minute I waked up, back a week or so ago, the morning after I'd done my Phil Sheridan stunt from Allison's to your shack. But do you mind telling me what your ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... fall overboard again, though he often was sent out to do some funny stunt that was to be used in ...
— The Moving Picture Boys on the Coast • Victor Appleton
... stopped, bat the dancers hurrying over got quite a different impression of the invader; in fact, the young people immediately suspected that it was a stunt, a hired entertainer come to amuse the party. The boys in long trousers looked at it rather disdainfully, and sauntered over with their hands in their pockets, feeling that their intelligence was being insulted. But the girls ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... he said so the minute we got in that canon, Moonstone Canon, you said. We're restin' up and enjoyin' the scenery. We need the rest, for only last week we resigned from doin' a stunt in a movin'-picture outfit. They wanted somebody to do native sons. We said we didn't have them kind of clothes, but the foreman of the outfit says we'd do fine jest as we was. It was fierce—and, believe me, lady, I been through ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... alighting on sharp pebbles varied the hopping, skipping and jumping, until the last scout dusted her toes and tried to explain the bare-foot stunt to surprised relatives. ...
— The Girl Scouts at Sea Crest - The Wig Wag Rescue • Lillian Garis
... along," observed William, dolefully; "because, you see, I'm dying to get to work and win some of them merits you told us about. Just set me the stunt of making water boil over a fire I have to kindle, and I'll do it in three shakes of a lamb's tail. The rest of you will be left hull down. And then there's lots of other jobs that look good to me. Let's get a move ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts - Or, The Struggle for Leadership • George A. Warren
... seek out the key situation in the life of a cabman or a charwoman, and make them glow for a brief moment in the tender light of his sympathy. He does not run sympathy as a "stunt" like so many popular novelists. He sympathizes merely in the sense that he understands in his heart as well as in his brain. He has the most unbiassed attitude, I think, of any author in the world. Mr. Edward Garnett, in his introduction to Mrs. Garnett's translation ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... little acrobatic stunt," declared Andy. "But it came in mighty handy. I shouldn't have tried it only he didn't fight fair—hitting me before I was ready, and kicking me when ...
— The Mystery at Putnam Hall - The School Chums' Strange Discovery • Arthur M. Winfield
... don't play fair. You start the game under one set o' rules an' then when you get the worst of it you just simply crawfish. When we were sayin' mean things out in the open, I just natchly put it all over you; an' now you flop over on your back an' work that 'coals o' fire' stunt, an' I just hate you. You know in your heart I'd be proud of you in any company on earth, but the' is a heap o' difference between you an' me. You have been successful, an' strangers will respect you for it; but it's got to be a show-down with me every time. If I don't learn the new ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason
... the pupils, "is rising and falling in a series of abrupt curves like those in a roller-coaster railway. It is a very useful stunt to be master of, for it enables one to rise quickly when confronting a field barrier, or to get out of range of a Hun ...
— Air Service Boys in the Big Battle • Charles Amory Beach
... punishment]. It is as if we took some minute poison with everything that was intended to nourish us. It is, we will suppose, of so mitigated a quality as never to have had the power to kill. But it may nevertheless stunt our growth, infuse a palsy into every one of our articulations, and insensibly change us from giants of mind which we might have been into ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... stunt with Mynie Boltwood," Burton answered, "and see if I can't get together a bit ...
— Owen Clancy's Happy Trail - or, The Motor Wizard in California • Burt L. Standish
... good enough, so I told her she was mistaken; that she was a Circassian beauty, and I gave her a wig and the fixings and put her on the platform. But say, would you believe it? She was so mad and embarrassed by the change in her stunt that when the lecturer was calling attention to her blond beauty, she would blush until she looked like an Indian Princess, and every time he turned his back she would take off her shoes and wiggle her toes at the audience to show what she ...
— Side Show Studies • Francis Metcalfe |
