"Jack-in-the-box" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... rusty stove-pipe. First seizing an axe, he chopped up some wood from a pile in the corner, and filled the stove; then he dragged down a bag of flour into his den; then up again he started, as suddenly as a Jack-in-the-box, for a round tin; then for some flat pans. Next we heard him shouting from below, "Is that fire burning good, boys? Cram her full; pile in more wood, and don't heed the smoke!" and he suddenly appeared with the pans full of buns, which were quickly ...
— A Trip to Manitoba • Mary FitzGibbon
... afire, and beheld Mother sitting up amid the hay—an amazing, a quite incredible situation for Mrs. Seth Appleby. She mildly dabbled at her gray hair, which was still neat, and looked across in bewilderment. Like a jack-in-the-box, Father came up out of the ...
— The Innocents - A Story for Lovers • Sinclair Lewis
... another Jack-in-the-box appeared Sergeant Schultz in exactly the same attitude. At a nod the sergeant melted into the semblance of human movement: he drew aside a chair, selected a certain document from a pile of them, and handed it ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... kidnapping cow-punchers to steal my boat," replied Hopalong. "An' you fellers stand still or I'll drop you cold!" he ordered to the assembled and restless crew. "Johnny!" he shouted, and his companion popped up through the hatch like a jack-in-the-box. "Good boy, Johnny. Tie this coyote foreman like you did the others," he ordered. While Johnny obeyed, Hopalong looked around the circle, and his eyes rested on Hogan's face, studying it, and found something there which warmed his ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford
... true; For she pined for love of the great big Jack Who lived in the box so grim and black. She never had looked on the Jack his face, But she fancied him shining with beauty and grace; And all the day long she would murmur and pout, Because Jack-in-the-box would never come out. "Oh, beautiful, beautiful Jack-in-the-box! Undo your bolts and undo your locks! The cupboard is shut, and there's no one about; Oh, Jack-in-the-box! jump out, jump out!" But alas, ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 4, February 1878 • Various
... same old elephant with two men inside, the good old chestnut that they'd been tryin' to laugh over for years, and when this philopena was sprung on 'em they were as tickled as a baby with a jack-in-the-box. It wouldn't have got more'n one laugh out of a crowd of every-day folks, but that swell mob just went wild over it. It was a new stunt, done special for them by one of their ...
— Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... was not long in coming, and the moment I heard it, up I jumped like a Jack-in-the-box, but without the squeak, in time to see a forktail leave a spot on the bank about 6 feet above the water. I was surprised, as I had the day before examined that place without discovering the nest. ...
— Birds of the Indian Hills • Douglas Dewar
... and taking off his soft hat he began to beat it impatiently against his leg as he walked. "Why shouldn't she take me seriously?" he demanded sharply. "Am I a comedian, a clown, a jack-in-the-box? Why shouldn't she? You Creoles! I have no patience with you! Am I always to be regarded as a feature of an amusing programme? I hope Mrs. Pontellier does take me seriously. I hope she has discernment enough to find in me something besides ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin
... characters, came with sudden delightfulness before his mind and urged him to write; but nothing so spontaneous could now be hoped for. His brain was too weary with months of fruitless, harassing endeavour; moreover, he was trying to devise a 'plot,' the kind of literary Jack-in-the-box which might excite interest in the mass of readers, and this was alien to the natural working of his imagination. He suffered the torments of nightmare—an oppression of the brain and heart which must ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... idea. A little round box lay near, which, as he remembered, contained a Jack-in-the-box, or Polichinelle, which the poor little Chevalier had bought at the fair at Tarascon. This he contrived to secrete and hand to Victorine. 'Keep the secret,' he said, 'and you will find your best guardian in that bit of a box.' And when that very ...
— A Modern Telemachus • Charlotte M. Yonge
... only to be overcome by correction, for without it the exercise cannot be completed. On the other hand, the correction is so easy that the child makes it himself. The little problem suddenly presenting itself to the child, almost like the unexpected object of a jack-in-the-box, has ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... of some approaching drama flooded the room. For how many years had she lived from day to day and nothing had occurred—so long that life had been unconscious, doped, inert. Now it had sprung into vitality again with the sudden frantic impertinence of a Jack-in-the-Box. For twenty years you are dry on the banks, half-asleep, stretching out lazy fingers for food, slumbering, waking, slumbering again. Suddenly a wave comes and you are swept off—swept ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... in the world had he come from? She certainly had not heard the slightest sound, and yet there he sat, in the corner, like a veritable Jack-in-the-box, his mild blue eyes staring apologetically at her, his nervous fingers toying with the inevitable ...
— The Old Man in the Corner • Baroness Orczy
... indecent (there is no other word for it) chromatic oriental phrase is so strange that none of us can ever recall it or forget it! And the frantically nervous Luisita Puchol, whose eyelids spring open like the cover of a Jack-in-the-box, and whose hands flutter like saucy butterflies, sings suggestive popular ditties just a shade better than any ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... the cover was tilted back we fell over in as much surprise as if a jack-in-the-box had sprung out at us. Instead of Sahwah's red dressing-gown on top as we had expected there were rows and rows of bottles. We stared stupidly, not knowing whether to believe our ...
— The Campfire Girls Go Motoring • Hildegard G. Frey
... was looking in the direction named, when, with startling suddenness, an Indian shot into sight on the furthest rock, beyond which the canyon made a sweeping curve that shut off further view. His appearance was like the upleaping of a Jack-in-the-box at the touch of the spring, but the explanation was evident: he was making his way down the gorge from above, when his leap from one rock to another brought him thus ...
— Two Boys in Wyoming - A Tale of Adventure (Northwest Series, No. 3) • Edward S. Ellis
... "A jack-in-the-box with a frisky eye Suddenly jumped his lid, And a white-rag rabbit that hung close by Squeaked with fright when he did; A dog from London began to bark; The animals in the Noah's ark Struggled and scuffled in the dark, Back in the ...
— Zodiac Town - The Rhymes of Amos and Ann • Nancy Byrd Turner
... when he underlined Bismarck's warning against Caesarism. In March, 1890, appeared Tenniel's famous cartoon "Dropping the Pilot"; in May of the same year the Kaiser appears as the Enfant Terrible of Europe, rocking the boat and alarming his fellow-rulers. In January, 1892, he is the Imperial Jack-in-the-Box with a finger in every pie; in March, 1892, the modern ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch
... merely child's play. Arrived at the mouth of the shaft, it elevates its eyes (which in the dark have rested in neatly fitting recesses) for the purpose of a cautious yet sweeping survey. Seeing nothing alarming, it emerges with the alertness of a jack-in-the-box, races several inches, and scatters the load broadcast as the sower of seed who went forth to sow. Then, as suddenly, the crab pauses and flattens itself—its body merging with its surroundings almost to ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... a late but very satisfactory dinner at the Castello-a-Mare, where the return of the missing ones was hailed with joy by the proprietor and his assistants. Even the little bewhiskered head-waiter, who resembled a jack-in-the-box more than he did a man, strove to celebrate the occasion by putting every good thing the house afforded before the returned guests. For, although they dared not interfere to protect the victims of the terrible Il Duca, the hotel people fully recognized ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Abroad • Edith Van Dyne
... a fainter degree the Miss Brownings, the Cumnor Charity School, and the new gown that was to come from Miss Rose's; into the midst of which the one great question, 'Who was it that people thought it was possible papa might marry?' kept popping up into her mouth, like a troublesome Jack-in-the-box. For the present, however, the lid was snapped down upon the intruder as often as he showed his head between her teeth. They were very polite to each other during the meal; and it was not a little tiresome to ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... we are paying as much as at a Fifth Avenue hotel, and get clear soup for dinner. Just like any one of those old-fashioned French places where they measure out with care all they give you, and where the head is a most distinguished and conspicuous jack-in-the-box who jacks at you all the time, bows every time you go down the hall and all and all and all. It is all so screamingly funny. The shops are nearly as big as our bedrooms at home with enough space to step in and leave your ...
— Letters from China and Japan • John Dewey
... if strung up, ready to meet anything, they bounded into the place, when, as if worked by a spring, the horrible figure in the tub started upright like a monstrous jack-in-the-box. ...
— The Dingo Boys - The Squatters of Wallaby Range • G. Manville Fenn
... fragile, glass, beware of damp, etc., etc. It is there—half smashed. There has been a collision. The cart has been run into by a carriage, as the case was being got down. The case has slipped on to the ground. It has been knocked in. And Kinko has jumped out like a jack-in-the-box—but alive, very ...
— The Adventures of a Special Correspondent • Jules Verne
... have been laughable but for its element of peril. Darting to the side of the stump opposite to that of the bear, Herbert would drop his head, and then instantly pop up again, like a jack-in-the-box, to see what the brute was doing. The latter, it may be said, ...
— Through Forest and Fire - Wild-Woods Series No. 1 • Edward Ellis
... many accomplishments," Vincent said (he is a man of rather a sardonic humor), "but in shying at the sticks he is quite unequalled: he has quite a genius for it. He ought to have the sticks painted on his carriage, as the French marshals have their batons. Hasn't he brought you a pincushion or a jack-in-the-box, Lady Raikes? and has he begun to neglect you so soon? Every father with a little boy at home" (and he congratulated her ladyship on the birth of that son and heir) "ought surely to think of him, and bring him a soldier, or a monkey, ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... it jumped up with a bang—a splendidly terrible thing of white bristles, and scarlet snout—to dance the fandango to a lively if unmusical tune. Then Tony, be sure, would laugh until he rolled from side to side. Mummy never responded to his wishes now, but Daddy had pleaded for the Jack-in-the-box to be spared, and sometimes when quite alone with Tony, would play the monkey-game in his inferior paternal style, pleased with such modified appreciation as the young ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... told him at last. "If you don't look out you'll have nervous prostration—or I shall, if you don't stop jumping about like a jack-in-the-box. I advise you," she said, "to see a doctor before you get ...
— The Tale of Betsy Butterfly - Tuck-Me-In Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... and so made it possible to raise it. Remaining quite still, Lawrence waited till he saw that the beam had been so far moved as to enlarge the space sufficiently for him to get through. Then, with a sudden spring a la Jack-in-the-box, he leaped out, and stood before the ...
— The Rover of the Andes - A Tale of Adventure on South America • R.M. Ballantyne
... of the corner of his eye at his reflection in the mirror, red-faced and very much abashed. For with the slipping of the shirt, on his shoulders there had sprung, with the movement of a released jack-in-the-box, two ...
— The Trimming of Goosie • James Hopper
... but he winked at Alice, and we saw that he meant to aid us on our way. So we climbed up, and he whipped up the horse and asked us where we were going. He was a kindly old man, with a face like a walnut shell, and white hair and beard like a jack-in-the-box. ...
— The Wouldbegoods • E. Nesbit
... team into which the runaway had so nearly dashed stood looking down from the bridge planking. His eyes stared wide as Andy suddenly appeared like a jack-in-the-box. ...
— Andy the Acrobat • Peter T. Harkness
... this is too ridiculous!" and Cynthia's foot stamped. "I have never before known my father behave in this Jack-in-the-Box fashion." ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... did not see how. Her first appearance to me was on the trunk, the opposite side from her nest, whence she slid, or so it looked, in a series of jerks to her door, paused a few minutes on the step to look sharply at me, and then disappeared, head first, within. Quick as a jack-in-the-box, her head popped out again to see if the spy had moved while she had been out of sight, and finding all serene, she threw herself with true feminine energy into her work. The beak-loads she brought to the door and flung out seemed so insufficient ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... by the nearest hamper, and cut the cord that fastened it. A pug jumped out like a jack-in-the-box, and rushed to the water. Sylvia continued her work of mercy, and by the time the colonel had recovered sufficiently to be able to express his views in English, eighteen more ...
— A Wodehouse Miscellany - Articles & Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... means of giving those hens the scare of their lives if they persisted in their antisocial habits. I constructed a "spoof" egg of white enamelled metal, with hinges that opened when a catch was touched. Inside I compressed one of those jack-in-the-box snakes that spring out when free to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 21, 1919. • Various
... was that Jimmie Junior couldn't keep his feet still. He could never keep any part of him still, the little jack-in-the-box. Here he was now, tearing about the kitchen, pursuing the ever-receding tail of the newest addition to the family, a half-starved cur who had followed Jimmie in from the street, and had been fed into ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair |
