"Shuffling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and tried to read, but the late fall wind swirled mournfully about the house and beat down the chimney, causing the fire to cast disturbing shadows across the walls. Her loneliness, and her nervousness, grew sharper. The restless, shuffling footsteps stimulated her imagination. Perhaps a mental breakdown was responsible for this alteration. She was tempted to ring for Jenkins, the butler, to share her vigil; or for one of the two women servants, now far at the back of ...
— The Abandoned Room • Wadsworth Camp
... of us young bucks jest step up and say we was good dancers, and we start shuffling while de rest of ...
— Slave Narratives, Oklahoma - A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From - Interviews with Former Slaves • Various
... a sort of nocturnal illumination, and shuffling away, in the loose shoes, to the keeping of which on her feet the better half of the best energies of her life were directed, gave out that she must be ...
— Chanticleer - A Thanksgiving Story of the Peabody Family • Cornelius Mathews
... words, a soft shuffling step was heard in the adjoining room, and a grave gentleman in spectacles made his appearance in ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... the honour; the room was cleared, music struck up, and festivity was soon in progress. What a display of neat ankles and deft feet in mocassins! What a clattering of sabots and shuffling of "beefs"! The perspiration rolled off the brow of the musician, and young Lecour was whirling round like a madcap with the daughter of the ferryman of Repentigny, when the latch was again lifted, ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... shadows move about, And some one seems to overhear our talk. The fire is low; the candles flicker out; The ghosts of former tenants want to walk. Already they are shuffling through the gloom. I felt an old man touch my shoulder-blade; Once he was married here; they love this room, He and his woman and the child they made. Dead, dead, they are, yet some familiar sound, Creeping along the brink of happy life, Revives ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 - Edited by Sir Edward Howard Marsh • Various
... and champagne, that our little hero grew crazed with ecstasy, and wild with love. In the midst of his happiness, a cruel knock was heard below, accompanied by quick loud talking, swearing, and shuffling of feet: you would have thought a regiment was at the door. "Oh heavens!" cried the marchioness, starting up, and giving to the hand of Poinsinet one parting squeeze; "fly—fly, my Poinsinet: 'tis the colonel—my husband!" At this, each gentleman of the party rose, and, drawing ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... No word was spoken. The silence was only broken by their shuffling feet, by the startling report of each blow, by De Chauxville's ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... to say at once—do you hear me? and spare neither for Ransom nor yourself. Tell all there is to be told, without any shuffling." ...
— Melbourne House, Volume 2 • Susan Warner
... The shuffling gait of the gigantic, unwieldy man, who had grown gray stooping over his work, had gained a certain majestic dignity. His cheeks glowed, and the gray eyes, which had long since acquired a fixed look from straining over the gemcutting, now beamed with a blissful radiance. Something wonderful must ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... In the street beneath her window footsteps sounded intermittently, coming and going with a certain eagerness of tread. After a time there came, from a distance, the sound of violins and the "coronet" of which Arline had been so proud; and mingled with it was an undercurrent of shuffling feet, a mere whisper of sound, cut sharply now and then by the sharp commands of the floor manager. They were dancing—in her honor. And she was a fool; a proud, ill-tempered, ...
— Lonesome Land • B. M. Bower
... thoughts were passing through her mind she happened to glance out of the window. Nutty was shambling through the garden with his pail, a bowed, shuffling pillar of gloom. As Elizabeth watched, he dropped the pail and lashed the air violently for a while. From her knowledge of bees ('It is needful to remember that bees resent outside interference and will resolutely defend themselves,' Encyc. ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse
... herself at the table and was shuffling a pack of cards. "Fifty-cent reading?" she asked, as he took the ...
— The Girl and The Bill - An American Story of Mystery, Romance and Adventure • Bannister Merwin
... shuffling his slippers along the floor, and examines all the laughing faces. As he cannot hear, he hesitates to sit down, and this time his smile betrays ...
— The New Book Of Martyrs • Georges Duhamel
... for golly sakes, I'm goin'!" said her recalcitrant one, shuffling off toward the ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... men are down there, but many kinds. There are Mexicans, Sinn Feiners, old American stock, and once in awhile a venturesome Yankee. There are lumberjacks in from the North, and Chinamen in shuffling slippers, and philosophers and Swedes, half-breeds and just plain men. Some are Vagabonds who can't help their roving, and others are very tired and would like to lie over in port for or a long spell. There are Italians, and Portuguese, and many Greeks, and turbaned Hindus, tall ...
— Vignettes of San Francisco • Almira Bailey
... shuffling across the ice to get at the sailing sleds. They were fast bunching immediately in the front of ...
— On a Torn-Away World • Roy Rockwood
... monster, that had been the cause of all this commotion, was shuffling closer with each passing second, eager to strike down the burro with one savage blow from his mighty paw with its long claws, after which he could proceed to help himself to what those ...
— The Saddle Boys of the Rockies - Lost on Thunder Mountain • James Carson
... the deck came to life. There was a murmur, a shuffling of feet, and Lynch lowered his great club. But it was an ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... polyanthus bright, And wondrous gay; You'll copy it by noon, She bade me say." Disorder grinn'd, Then shuffling walk'd away. ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... began to purr out of the narrow side streets lined with shoddy buildings which housed the summer sojourners. One more Sunday night's revelry was tapering off into shouted farewells, clanging gongs, honking horns and the shuffling ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... menacing. It broadened, deepened, and every day countless streams swelled its volume. Islands waded in it greenly. Always we heard it singing, a seething, hissing noise supposed to be the pebbles shuffling on the bottom. ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... of the camp, the officers' tents, kitchens, canteen, and appurtenances in the rear were blotted out by the ground, because of its height above her. She could discern the forms of one or two sentries moving to and fro across the disc of the moon at intervals. She could hear the frequent shuffling and tossing of the horses tied to the pickets; and in the other direction the miles-long voice of the sea, whispering a louder note at those points of its length where hampered in its ebb and flow by some jutting promontory ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... Shuffling inside the teepee, he presently reappeared with a little bundle wrapped in folds of dressed moose hide. Sitting calm he undid it deliberately. A pearl-handled revolver was revealed ...
— The Huntress • Hulbert Footner
... his saddle to a great height above the humble level of the back that he bestrides, and using an awfully sharp bit, is able to lift the crest of his nag, and force him into a strangely fast shuffling walk, the orthodox pace for the journey. My comrade and I, using English saddles, could not easily keep our beasts up to this peculiar amble; besides, we thought it a bore to be followed by our attendants for a ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... Flowers, favours, fuss and fluster, incense, 'The Voice that breathed o'er Eden,' suppressed nervous excitement, maddening delay, shuffling and whispers, acute long-drawn-out boredom of the men, sentimental interest of the women, tears of emotion from dressmakers in the background, disgusted resignation on the part of people who wanted to be at Kempton (and couldn't hear ...
— Love's Shadow • Ada Leverson
... incontestable. It is difficult—much more difficult than one thinks—to do with the left hand what one was accustomed to do with the right. You will convince yourself of it, Sire, if you will condescend to try our system on something which is familiar to you,—like shuffling cards, for instance. We can then flatter ourselves that we have opened an ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat
... that for all the good he could do he might just as well not hurry back again, resigned himself to the inevitable, picked up his bridle, went into the shuffling herd of horses, and caught the one pointed out to him. It was a big, raw-boned, ragged-hipped bay, a horse that would have been a gentleman under any other conditions, but from long buffalo-hunting had become a careless-going, loose-jointed ...
— An Outback Marriage • Andrew Barton Paterson
... or two later fire was followed by panic, and Marshall felt himself crowded towards the brink of ruin. In a moment of weakness he permitted himself a course to which only so great an emergency could have prompted him. The situation was saved by a species of legerdemain—of card-shuffling, so to speak—which was quite outside the lines of mercantile morality, and barely inside the lines of legality itself. An instrument willing to lend itself to this feat of juggling was needed, and was found in a pushing young ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... for a definite reason. Either they are irresponsible vagabonds who take this way of shuffling off their responsibilities, or they are men who have been caught in a net of distasteful circumstances. For instance, a civil servant or a solicitor or a tradesman finds himself bound for life to a locality and an occupation of intolerable monotony. Perhaps he has an ill-tempered wife, ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman
... collar, and, executing a shuffling fandango of triumph, he pushed me ahead of him to the stable, where old white Peggy, the only horse left at home, looked at ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... no notice beyond shuffling about a little and uttering a slight growl. The woman who held her put out an arm and drew back the child's hand reprovingly. The child paid no heed to this, but continued to stare. Then in another minute she again bent forward, and tapped ...
— The Delectable Duchy • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... broken only by the shuffling of the sheets of the letter as he turned them. Not once did he look up from his reading. Right through to the end, the dreadful, bitter end, he read the hideous news his loyal friend had to impart. ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... cruel cold on the water-front, silent and dark and drear; Only the black tide weltering, only the hissing snow; And I, alone, like a storm-tossed wreck, on this night of the glad New Year, Shuffling along in the icy wind, ghastly and ...
— The Spell of the Yukon • Robert Service
... treason. He also disclaimed all participation in the law for taxing America, as he had not been consulted on the subject. The Duke of Grafton complained of both these lords, and accused Camden of meanness and shuffling, in endeavouring to screen himself by accusing others; reminding him, that at the time the act was passed, he was lord-chancellor, and had signified the royal approbation of the act in his official capacity. Lord Lyttleton seconded ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... coming, ma!" replied Grandpa, rising hastily and shuffling toward the door; "I'm a coming, ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... lower steps, close to the Piazza di Spagna; but as one ascends to the last platform, before reaching the upper piazza in front of the Trinit de' Monti, a curious squat figure, with two withered and crumpled legs, spread out at right angles and clothed in long stockings, comes shuffling along on his knees and hands, which are protected by clogs. As it approaches, it turns suddenly up from its quadrupedal position, takes off its hat, shows a broad, stout, legless torso, with a vigorous chest and a ruddy face, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... followed the shuffling sound of many feet padding through the snow. The storm had ceased by this time, and all the world was wrapped in a white silence, broken only by the sound of the distant bells. And now the Christmas waits had followed the bells' ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... time for thinking. All at once the rushing sound began again, accompanied by a shuffling and a hoarse "Get out," followed by the sound of a blow, and directly after ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn
... as from the throats of feeding beasts, greeted this comment. Footfalls, shuffling, ...
— The Law of the Land • Emerson Hough
... we, and what do we mean by Ourselves? When I meet a ragged, shuffling tramp on the road (and I meet a good many of them in my lonely walks) I often find myself asking the question, "How did that shambling vagabond come to his present condition? Did his father turn him out of doors? Did his ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... Gibbie had small need of light in the nearly pitch darkness of the place, for there was positively nothing to stumble over or against between the door and the ancient four-post bed, which was all of his father's house that remained to Sir George. With heavy shuffling feet the drunkard lumbered laboriously bedward; and the bare posts and crazy frame groaned and creaked as he fell upon the oat-chaff that lay waiting him in place of the vanished luxury of feathers. Wee Gibbie flew at his legs, nor rested until, ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... Shuffling to his position, he stood in such a shambling, bow-legged sort of an attitude that even the politest of the girls smiled; and those who were specially anxious that the Reds should win felt more ...
— Donald and Dorothy • Mary Mapes Dodge
... There's nought on earth that has such tempting charms As rank and show, and pomp, and glitt'ring dress, Save the dear counters at belov'd Quadril, Viner unsoil'd, and Littleton, may sleep, And Coke lie mould'ring on the dusty shelf, If I by shuffling draw some lucky card That wins ...
— The Group - A Farce • Mercy Warren
... rather than physical force) is held by a woman; and anyone who will watch girls making change before the pneumatic tubes in the great department stores about Christmas time will experience the same wonder one feels on first seeing a professional gambler shuffling cards. ...
— Sex and Society • William I. Thomas
... surface curved more and more steeply at the head, and the pits became shallower and less abundant, until I found myself in danger of being shed off like avalanching snow. I persisted, however, creeping on all fours, and shuffling up the smoothest places on my back, as I had often done on burnished granite, until, after slipping several times, I was compelled to retrace my course to the bottom, and make my way around the west end of the lake, and thence up to the summit of the divide between the head waters of Rush Creek ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... shuffling gait, holding a tattered straw hat in his hands, and with a bow and sheepish look stopped directly ...
— The Brother Clerks - A Tale of New-Orleans • Xariffa
... text, "How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?" Your praises of Aunt Esther I read twice in an audible voice, as the children made some noise the first time. I think I detected a visible blush, though she found at that time a great deal to do in spreading bread and butter for James, and shuffling his plate; and, indeed, it was rather a vehement attack on her humility, since it gave her at least "angelic perfection," if not "Adamic" (to use Methodist technics). Jamie began his Sunday-school career yesterday. The superintendent asked him how old he was. "I'm ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... is shuffling; the motion of the body, which is never upright as in man, but bent forward, is somewhat rolling, or from side to side. The arms being longer than the Chimpanzee, it does not stoop as much in walking; like that animal, it makes progression by thrusting its ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... heads the muzzles of rifles were bobbing up and down. The trampling of feet and the shuffling of packed bodies made a dull under-note. Shouts arose ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt
... toe, as many another Canadian boy has done, on the barn floor, where, with the doors shut, I went sliding up and down, through the middle, balancing to the pitch- fork, turning round the old fanning-mill, then double-shuffling and closing with a profound bow to the splint broom in the corner. These were the kind of schools in which our accomplishments were learned; and, whether dancing be right or wrong, it is certain the inclination of the young to indulge in it is about as universal as the taint ...
— Life in Canada Fifty Years Ago • Canniff Haight
... food upon a donkey, and gave the boy directions where to meet him—a considerable distance from the appointed spot. He went himself on foot. He slipped in the heat along the sandy street, where strings of camels still go slouching, shuffling with their loads from the quarries that built the pyramids, and he felt that little friendly Helouan tried to keep him back. But desire now was far too strong for caution. The desert tide was rising. It easily swept him down the ...
— Four Weird Tales • Algernon Blackwood
... Your next Shuffling and Dealing will cause you to lay down, from the Bottom of the Pack, Four Cards, in a Right Ascension (Fig. 6), as ...
— The Square of Sevens - An Authoritative Method of Cartomancy with a Prefatory Note • E. Irenaeus Stevenson
... soon. Towsley had taken his ragged cap in his hand, fastened his torn jacket by its one button, and was shuffling carefully along the hall toward the front door. Miss Armacost ...
— Divided Skates • Evelyn Raymond
... as fast as his shuffling legs would bear him, up the dirty lane that led to his abode, and fell rather than walked into the low door that led into his hut. His wife was engaged in washing a baby—the seventh—and Beile, an ill-favored, sallow-complexioned girl, sat at ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith
... fierce harking of the mastiff watch-dog, which as suddenly subsided and was followed by a quick, joyous yelp of recognition. Shuffling feet were then heard in the outer kitchen, stamping off ...
— Neville Trueman the Pioneer Preacher • William Henry Withrow
... Dr. Johnson. I ventured to ask him one day if he had ever seen the doctor. "No," said he; "but I went down to Bolt Court in 1782 with the intention of making Dr. Johnson's acquaintance. I raised the knocker tremblingly, and hearing the shuffling footsteps as of an old man in the entry, my heart failed me, and I put down the knocker softly again, and crept back into Fleet Street without seeing the vision I was not bold enough to encounter." ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... sound of a voice. The silent, ghostly figures merged into a compact, motionless mass in front of the meetinghouse. It was not necessary for Percival to call for order when he appeared on the steps and began to speak. The only sounds were the shuffling of feet, the rustling of garments, the deep, restrained breathing ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... And all the time the stream of shabby people was hastening by us, with the continuous dreary shuffling of weary footsteps on the flagstones. The sunshine falling on the grime of surfaces, on the poverty of tones and forms seemed of an inferior quality, its joy faded, its brilliance tarnished and dusty. I had to raise my voice in the dull ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... distraught eagerness, and with a multitude of small exclamations, until, screeching jubilantly once, he pounced upon a shabby and learned-looking volume. This he brought me, thrusting it with his trembling fingers between my own, and shuffling the open pages. But when the apparently right one was found, he exclaimed, "No, I have better! and dashed away to a pile of pamphlets on the floor, where he began to plough and harrow. Wondering if I was closeted with a maniac, ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... child. Before he had time to think of further resistance he was bound, gagged, and carried, half-suffocated, to the corner of the Rue de la Chaise. No sound had been heard; not a word, not an ejaculation, not even a noise of shuffling—nothing. Any suspicious sound might have reached May, on the other side of the wall, and warned him of what was ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... hired man turned the horses homeward. The station agent was threading his way through his car report, and remained provokingly unconscious of Harris's presence at the ticket window. The farmer took no pains to conceal his impatience, coughing and shuffling obviously, but it was not until the last box-car had been duly recorded that the agent ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead
... Burke, it was something that soothed me like beautiful music after the rotten, miserable, wretched conditions I had seen in the city. It does a fellow good once in a while to get away from the grip of the tenements, the shades of the skyscrapers, the roar of the factories, and the shuffling, tired footsteps of the crowds, the smell ...
— Traffic in Souls - A Novel of Crime and Its Cure • Eustace Hale Ball
... other figures; one was the half-naked negro, the other the man with the plaited queue and the earrings, whom Tom had seen lifting the chest out of the boat. Now they were carrying the heavy box between them, laboring through the sand with shuffling tread as ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle
... 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
... cross-examination, Mother Jael could give no evidence as to Jentham's real name, or about his past, or why he was lingering at Beorminster. 'He cum'd an' he go'd,' said Mother Jael, with the air of an oracle, and that was the extent of her information, delivered in a croaking, shuffling, unconvincing manner. ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... toothbrush mug—Mr. Ottinger elected to imbibe his "straight" from the bottle—it was drunk with mutual assurances of tender regard. "Happy days," the woman pronounced. Only three chairs were available, and after some shuffling, appropriate references to "honest and plain" country accommodations, the table was ranged by a bed on which Em—"Call me Em," she had invited Gordon, "let's be ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... that moment heavy footsteps sounded upon the stairs, and two constables, conducted by the shuffling old ...
— The Seven Secrets • William Le Queux
... thieving butler he had discharged in London. His attention did not linger on this familiar soft-shuffling tool of the master thief, however, but snapped back to the big, good looking young man with the branching shoulders and ...
— Officer 666 • Barton W. Currie
... was wondering what The Author would have said had he seen us at that moment—The Jinnee shuffling ahead in heelless slippers and Oriental dress, upon his woolly head a red fez with a silver crescent on it, and on his breast a string of saphies, verses from the Koran, in exquisite Arabic script, framed in flat round ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... the pastor made his appearance, looking somewhat damp about the face and hair, and rather embarrassed about the shape of his coat, which was much too large for him, and hung rather low about his heels. With an awkward shuffling gait he approached us, and, having shaken hands with Zoega, looked askant at me, and said something, which my guide ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... their claims and distract us from our single decided course, is one of the most potent forces in winning success. To hesitate is sometimes to be lost. In fact, the man who is forever twisting and turning, backing and filling, hesitating and dawdling, shuffling and parleying, weighing and balancing, splitting hairs over non-essentials, listening to every new motive which presents itself, will never accomplish anything. There is not positiveness enough in him; ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... in absolute silence as far as the vicinity of the dug-out was concerned, although three or four hundred yards away the desultory firing still continued. Three quarters of a minute: there was a shuffling sound from the subterranean retreat and the guttural voice of several Huns engaged ...
— Wilmshurst of the Frontier Force • Percy F. Westerman
... pardoned and retain the offence? In the corrupted currents of this world Offence's gilded hand may shove by justice. And oft 't is seen the wicked prize itself Buys out the law: but 't is not so above; There is no shuffling, there the action lies In his true nature; and we ourselves compelled, Even to the teeth and forehead of our faults, To give in evidence. What then? what rests? Try what repentance can: what can it not? Yet what can it when one cannot repent? O wretched state! O bosom black as death! ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... gave me himself at different times with his own hand." "You surprise me." "I saw him coming once with his servants. I had my baby in my arms—that's she that lives in that cottage yonder, she's grown a woman now—and I was shuffling along to get out of his way, when he called out, 'What a beautiful little babe, let me look at it,' and then he smiled and made as though he would shake hands with the child, and, bless you, he slipped half-a-sovereign into my hand." I confess I was delighted ...
— Recollections of the late William Beckford - of Fonthill, Wilts and Lansdown, Bath • Henry Venn Lansdown
... 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 fingers. Inside ...
— The Diamond Master • Jacques Futrelle
... prayer ended; the people rose with shuffling feet. Sir Allan Redmain from his seat in front of the altar looked anxiously round towards the door, as he had done many times during that service, in search of Kenric. He now saw the bent figure of Elspeth Blackfell, and behind ...
— The Thirsty Sword • Robert Leighton
... up. Chia Chen was himself at this time rather unwell, and being also very much cut up, he entered the room shuffling along, propping himself ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... sat John C. Underwood, a crawling, shambling, shuffling, ignorant demagogue who had set a new standard of judicial honor and dignity. He had selected one of the handsomest homes in Virginia, ordered it confiscated as a Federal judge, and made his wife buy it in ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon
... on, however, without disturbance, or sight of an enemy, until we came nearly to the edge of the town and saw the glistening roof of the church appear above the foliage,—where sat sundry carrion-loving buzzards, elbowing each other, shuffling to and fro with outspread wings, and chuckling, doubtless, over the promise of glorious times. As we go on, suddenly heads appear over the bushes less than a hundred yards in front, and we hear the vindictive whistle of Minie-balls above us. Our leader, calling upon us to fire, began himself to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... a grim twilight, cold and grey. The wind was rising. In the night it blew half a gale, but at this hour there was only a strong breeze in which minute sand-grains danced. The murderer's feet were shod with patched slippers, and the sound of these slippers shuffling close behind me made me feel faintly uneasy. The Spahi stared at my cigar so persistently that I was obliged to offer him one. When I had done so, and he had loftily accepted it, I half turned towards the murderer. The Spahi scowled ferociously. ...
— The Desert Drum - 1905 • Robert Hichens
... interpretation. The counter was piled high with men's garments of every color that is bestowed upon woolen cloth in the dyers' vats. Uncle Silas stood behind it with his glasses at a rampant angle on his nose, and Aunt Mary stood in the center of a shuffling, embarrassed, harassed group of farmers in overalls. Before her stood Bud, attired in a light gray suit of aggressively new clothes, and she was using him hard as a dummy upon which to illustrate her vigorous and ...
— The Golden Bird • Maria Thompson Daviess
... in, he shuffling after me through the unlighted hall up to the first floor where the murder had taken place, and I prepared myself to hear his inevitable account before turning him out with the half-crown his persistence had earned. After lighting the gas I sat down in the ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... the scene. Cassion pushed past, and occupied a vacant chair, between the other officers, laying his sword on the table. My eyes swept about the circle of faces seeking De Artigny, but he was not present. But for a slight shuffling of feet, the silence was oppressive. Cassion's unpleasant voice ...
— Beyond the Frontier • Randall Parrish
... does not exist here, except between people of the same rank. It is more like some remains of the feudal system, where the retainers sat at the same table with their chief, but below the salt. The dances are monotonous, with small steps and a great deal of shuffling, but the music is rather pretty, and some of the dancers were very graceful and agile; and if it were not invidious to make distinctions, we might particularize Bernardo the Matador, the head coachman, and a handsome peasant-girl, with a short scarlet and yellow ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... log into place he may have made some little sound that reached the ears of the crazy man within the cabin. Max heard a shuffling of feet. Then the door was shaken, at first gently, and then with more and more violence, until the very walls of the cabin seemed to quiver under the ...
— The Strange Cabin on Catamount Island • Lawrence J. Leslie
... 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 that ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... asked herself deliberately. "Of course, if it goes beyond a certain point it is like madness—you must keep out of its way, for your own sake. But papa used to say there were many things a great deal worse. So there are!—meanness, and shuffling with truth for the sake of your soul. As for the other tales, I don't believe them. But if I did, I am not going ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. I. • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... together. In the stillness he had his fight! And just then a shuffling outside brought him back ...
— At the Crossroads • Harriet T. Comstock
... 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
... the adjoining room cut short her defense, and as the crowd surged forward in that direction, she beheld the jolly old Saint shuffling across the floor dragging his heavy pack which certainly looked as sooty and dirty as if he had really plunged down the tall chimney and through the fireplace. Straight to her corner he came, and fumbling in his sack, drew forth a tiny statue of the Goddess of Liberty, which he presented ...
— The Lilac Lady • Ruth Alberta Brown
... resentment over the contemptuous behavior of Taggarak toward him. Instead of contenting himself with merely challenging the Shawanoe to mortal combat, he sent him word that all that was left for him to do was to choose between two methods of shuffling off the mortal coil. It was to be the Spirit Circle or by the knife of the Blackfoot. This scornful treatment of the youth angered him, and it was one of the reasons why he decided to adopt a policy which in other circumstances he would have considered ...
— Deerfoot in The Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... finally deemed the plan "utterly improper," and threatened to hold aloof from those who would not support the new Administration or croaked about its instability. The action of Dundas and the bishop was unfortunate; for it gave rise to the report that Pitt was intriguing with them for a shuffling of offices in which he would again come out at the top; and, as usually happens, the meanest version overshadowed ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... about half-past two a dull sound of cannonading was heard without the church, and signals took place between the Commandant of the Invalids, of the National Guards, and the big drum-major. Looking to these troops (the fat Nationals were shuffling into line again) the two Commandants tittered, as nearly as I could ...
— The Second Funeral of Napoleon • William Makepeace Thackeray (AKA "Michael Angelo Titmarch")
... got to the factor's house, he went straight into the store and asked if he might speak to the master. The storeman stared and lingered before finally shuffling to the door of the office and knocking. In a moment the door was half opened by the factor himself, who, when he caught sight of little Snjolfur and heard that he wanted to speak to him, turned to him again and, after looking him up and ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... were, on a moderate computation, a hundred people, slowly shuffling up these stairs, on their knees, at one time; while others, who were going up, or had come down—and a few who had done both, and were going up again for the second time— stood loitering in the porch below, where an old gentleman in a sort of watch-box, rattled a tin canister, ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... 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 ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... o'clock in the afternoon of a spring day in the year 1868, a young man of twenty-seven, carelessly and shabbily dressed, was toiling up the back staircase of a five-storied house on Officers Street in St. Petersburg. Noisily shuffling his down-trodden goloshes and slowly swinging his heavy, clumsy figure, the man at last reached the very top flight and stopped before a half-open door hanging off its hinges. He did not ring the bell, but gave a loud sigh and walked straight into ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... 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 quivering of her limbs; it was as ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... far below. Here, on long autumn afternoons, sparkling and cool, but golden at the heart, ending gloriously in red, sudden sunsets, football practice went on every day; shifting here and there, mysteriously, over the field, the arbitrary evolutions that were football, the shuffling, and shouting, and panting silence; on rugs and sweaters under the trees, an audience of girls, shivering delightfully, or holding some hero's sweater, ...
— The Wishing Moon • Louise Elizabeth Dutton
... oil and some coils of rope in there. At intervals soft-footed natives came in, and I was never certain whether it was to slay me or to get some of their stores. Once a figure blocked out the starlight at one of the windows, and I heard a rustling and shuffling on the shelf where my food tins were piled. So I said, "Sigue! ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... town hall where I pounded on the door and called my name. A familiar shuffling of feet told me that Monsieur Duguey had remained faithful to his post as town clerk (the only acting official since the army was mobilized) and when he opened the door and saw me, his eyes lit up with joy. ...
— My Home In The Field of Honor • Frances Wilson Huard
... there is nothing I desire more to be informed of than of the death of men; that is to say, what words, what countenance, and what face they shew at their death; and in reading of histories, which I so attentively observe. It appeareth by the shuffling and hudling up[Footnote: Collecting] of my examples, I affect[Footnote: Like] no subject so particularly as this. Were I a composer of books, I would keepe a register, commented of the divers deaths, which in teaching men to die, should after ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... and make it cling to the teeth. Sometimes persons emit sparks in pulling off their flannels or silk stockings. The fur of a cat, or even of a garment, stroked in the dark with a warm dry hand will be seen to glow, and perhaps heard to crackle. During winter a person can electrify himself by shuffling in his slippers over the carpet, and light the gas with a spark from his finger. Glass and sealing-wax are, however, the most convenient means for investigating ...
— The Story Of Electricity • John Munro
... that was for ever shuffling frantically from side to side of the pool, had particularly fascinated me: there was a vacancy in its stare, and an aimless violence in its behaviour, that irresistibly recalled the Gardener who had befriended Sylvie and ...
— Sylvie and Bruno • Lewis Carroll
... no time in landing, and not waiting to place the Wondership in her shed, set out to look for Mr. Chadwick. Jupe came shuffling by on his ...
— The Boy Inventors' Radio Telephone • Richard Bonner
... daughter were both very still until the shuffling of the physician's slippered feet was heard in the passage. Then the Countess roused herself and answered the appeal with ...
— Earl Hubert's Daughter - The Polishing of the Pearl - A Tale of the 13th Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... 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. ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... pardon'd and retain the offence? In the corrupted currents of this world Offence's gilded hand may shove by justice; And oft 'tis seen the wicked prize itself Buys out the law; but 'tis not so above; There is no shuffling;—there the action lies In his true nature; and we ourselves compell'd, Even to the teeth and forehead of our faults, To give in evidence. What then? what rests? Try what repentance can: what can it not? Yet what can it when one cannot repent? O ...
— Hamlet, Prince of Denmark • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... sidewalks were peopled by vividly dressed, overpainted girls, who chattered volubly in low, lazy voices, by dozens of taxi-drivers who assailed passing officers with "Take y' anywheh, Lieutenant," and by an intermittent procession of ragged, shuffling, subservient negroes. Anthony, loitering along through the warm dusk, felt for the first time in years the slow, erotic breath of the South, imminent in the hot softness of the air, in the pervasive lull, ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... and then Mrs. Jakes, now the only servant in the house, was heard shuffling along the passage, followed by a ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... up abruptly and then knelt down on the ground by the side of the thing unseen. There was a pushing and shuffling, a sound of heavy feet as fresh people turned up to increase the pressure of the crowd. People now were coming out of the houses. The doors of the "Jolly Cricketers" stood suddenly wide ...
— The Invisible Man • H. G. Wells
... supplemented by the roll of the heavy carts which purveyed the only water suitable for drinking and culinary purposes; and by the sounds of wood-sawing and wood-chopping before the doors of the adjacent houses—sounds quickly blending themselves with the shuffling feet of the slaves cleaning the doorsteps and sidewalks, and chattering, singing, quarrelling the while with their neighbours, or with other early ministers to the city's ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... the saviour of his country from the Spanish yoke, as he professed himself in his defence on his trial, and Spain's determined enemy, to Sir Walter Raleigh, whose head had just fallen on the block, the victim of a perfidious foe and of a mean, shuffling king. The following is ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various
... 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
... 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 ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... talked she was shuffling ponderously about the small kitchen in which she cooked the food for her lodgers who were also boarders. When I first entered, she had been hard at work, nor had she let up once throughout the conversation. Undoubtedly she was a busy woman. "Up at half-past five," "to bed the last thing at night," ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London
... an empty pocket for his revolver, which had fallen out as we struggled on the floor. I saw it there now with my starting eyeballs, kicked about by our shuffling feet. I tried to make a dive for it, but Levy had seen it also, and he kicked it through the banisters without relaxing his murderous hold. I could have sworn afterwards that I heard the weapon fall with a clatter on the wooden stairs. But what I still remember hearing ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... one," said the ostler admiringly. "Tony and I a-watched her and the dog a-driving him through the gates. With his bundle on his back, he was a-shuffling along, a-nigh on his all-fours; and the madam at his heels, with her head up in the air, and her eyes ...
— The Bow of Orange Ribbon - A Romance of New York • Amelia E. Barr
... declaration of a principle which has since been the base of every attempt at reform in the civil service. Mr. Jefferson answered that after one half of the subordinates were exchanged, talents and worth might alone be inquired into in the case of new vacancies. This was a miserable shuffling policy which defeated itself. For a Federalist to retain office when such a discrimination was applied was of itself a degradation. Mr. Jefferson here threw away and forever lost the power to establish the true system, and fixed the curse of patronage upon American administration. ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens
... young man behind the desk, and when the same freckle-faced lad, who had pointed out to Joe the manager, came shuffling up, the lad took our hero's satchel, and did a little one-step glide with ...
— Baseball Joe in the Big League - or, A Young Pitcher's Hardest Struggles • Lester Chadwick
... the darkness to a tumble-down building not far from Baxter street. The front door was unlocked. He opened it, and feeling his way up—for there were no lights—knocked in a peculiar way at a door just at the head of the stairs. His knock was evidently heard, for shuffling steps were heard within, a bolt was drawn, and Marlowe confronted a little old man, of feeble frame and deeply furrowed face, who scanned the face of his visitor by the light of a candle which he held ...
— Slow and Sure - The Story of Paul Hoffman the Young Street-Merchant • Horatio Alger
... 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 heavy foot striking against the wooden seats in the press. ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... a long time he lay, listening. Was there another person in the room? Mr. Grimm's ears were keenly alive for the inadvertent shuffling of a foot; or the sound of breathing. Nothing. Even the night roar of the city was missing; the silence was oppressive. At last he opened his eyes. A pall of gloom encompassed him—a pall without one rift of light. ...
— Elusive Isabel • Jacques Futrelle
... heard in the room were the shuffling of the feet of the two wrestlers and the oaths of the enraged Bluffy. Keith had not uttered a word. He fought like a bulldog, without noise. His effort was, while he still gripped the pistol, to bring his two hands together behind his opponent's back. A sudden relaxation of ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... 178 will be found the simplest letter game. Letters can be used for a round game by one player making a word, shuffling it, and throwing it face upward into the middle of the table. The winner is the player who first ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... that he can, and shuffling into the next room, he whispers, "Washington!" The girl is sent out to get refreshments. It is in vain that she seeks to sign or speak to the man who sits there so calmly before the fire, for her father is never out of sight or hearing. After Washington ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... retreated to the window, begging that I might not be any 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 ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... and complete, and nothing now remained but to pronounce him guilty, and sentence him to the penalty his crime required. This duty the judge was proceeding to discharge, when at the door of the court was heard a commotion. For a moment the judge's words were drowned in the shuffling of feet and the sound of voices; then the door opened, and in walked a youth, scarcely more than a boy, tall, slender, and handsome, with flushed cheeks and wild eye, fashionably dressed, with a sword at his side and a plumed ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... it on a finger of the bride. As all was confusion I signed to the old clerk to put matters straight. Attired in a brown coat and leather gaiters, with spectacles on his nose, and a large Prayer Book in his hands, he came shuffling forward from the background, exclaiming out loud, "Bless me, bless me! never knew such a thing happen afore in all my life!" The service was completed without any further interruption, but again I had a sore difficulty in ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... Southwark. Yesterday morning, at the Pump-room, I saw a broken-winded Wapping landlady squeeze through a circle of peers, to salute her brandy-merchant, who stood by the window, propped upon crutches; and a paralytic attorney of Shoe-lane, in shuffling up to the bar, kicked the shins of the chancellor of England, while his lordship, in a cut bob, drank a glass of water at the pump. I cannot account for my being pleased with these incidents, any other way, than by saying they are truly ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... just when dinner was on the table, I heard an unusual noise and shuffling on the stairs, and a heavy knock on the door. I opened it, and saw four men bearing on a pallet the form of my friend Paton. A police officer accompanied them. They brought Paton in, and laid him on his bed. The officer told me briefly what had happened, ...
— David Poindexter's Disappearance and Other Tales • Julian Hawthorne
... housekeeper as she led the way timidly to my room. As we passed into a dark hall in the wing, I noticed that it was closed by an iron gate with a grating. Three of the doors on the corridor were likewise grated. A strange noise, as of shuffling feet and the howling of infuriated animals, rang through the hall. Bidding the housekeeper good-night, and taking the candle, I ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... about half an hour they heard soft, shuffling noises beside the cabin, just under ...
— The Forest Runners - A Story of the Great War Trail in Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... labour by holding with their hands a bamboo placed horizontally over their heads. Although, by going always unshod, their feet are extremely callous, and therefore adapted to the exercise, yet the workmen when closely tasked by their masters sometimes continue shuffling till the blood issues from their soles. This is the universal ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... so glad to make you my compliments," said Mr. Gusher, making one of his best bows, and moving backward with a shuffling motion, "I am so glad to make you my friend," he continued, bowing and placing his right hand on his heart. Mattie's beauty was quite up to the picture Mr. Gusher had drawn of it in his imagination. ...
— The Von Toodleburgs - Or, The History of a Very Distinguished Family • F. Colburn Adams
... wit is got in proportion. I saw her when she was seventeen, in a short frock of staring blue; she was very thin then, and was escorted by a brother, squeezed inside a schoolboy's suit; they were out for their first walk alone, both red-faced, flurried, shuffling along the sidewalks of Bourges. That was enough. For me she will always wear that look, that frock, that clumsy gait. Recollections, my good uncle, are not unlike instantaneous photographs; and this one is a distinct ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... painfully stew, shuffling gait. "What is it, Mis' Elizabeth?" he inquired mildly, eyeing his mistress with affection in ...
— The Camp Fire Girls Do Their Bit - Or, Over the Top with the Winnebagos • Hildegard G. Frey
... past the windows, and the children must have the lights lighted for their writing lesson. She was tired of it all, with an utter and hopeless weariness. Tired of the bells, and the whispering, and the shuffling feet, of the books that smelled of pencil-dust and ink and little dusty fingers; tired of the blackboards, cleaned in great irregular scallops by small and zealous arms; of the clear-ticking big clock; of little girls who sulked, and little girls ...
— Mother • Kathleen Norris
... and talked till the twilight began to fall, then they heard Mrs. Gray shuffling up ...
— Rosa's Quest - The Way to the Beautiful Land • Anna Potter Wright
... A shuffling formation took place, and half of the Dutch sailors ranged up beside the prisoners; the other half remained and herded the gold washers together. Barry tried to look around, but a pistol at his head warned him not to try it again, and out of a corner ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... by a driveway, the three horsemen swung through spacious grounds and into a courtyard behind the house, where an old man came shuffling slowly forward, his wrinkled face puckered into a smile ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... don't know," said the officer, lightly, as he put on his spectacles, opened his saddle-bags and took out some papers. "Some of these lawyers have got after you, I suppose, thinking you're getting along too peart. Let me see," he continued, shuffling over the papers in his hand. "Here's a summons in a civil action—the old man, Granville Sykes, against Nimbus Desmit and Eliab Hill. Where is 'Liab? I must see him, too. Here's your copy," he continued, ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... fiercely, like a locomotive blowing off steam. Then he rose and took two or three turns up and down the gallery, shuffling his feet, his chest heaving. Then he ...
— Monsieur de Camors, Complete • Octave Feuillet
... sure enough, Master Guy. I should not know myself, and am not surprised that you do not know me; in faith, my back aches with walking with a stoop, and my legs with shuffling along as if I had scarce the use of them, instead of stepping out manfully. Is all well? We have heard of strange doings—that the butchers have, with the countenance of Burgundy, bearded the Duke of Aquitaine, and even carried off some ...
— At Agincourt • G. A. Henty
... in we went, with soul intent On Death and Dread and Doom: The hangman, with his little bag, Went shuffling through the gloom: And I trembled as I groped my way Into ...
— Book of Old Ballads • Selected by Beverly Nichols
... matter of common sense: We expect third graders to read and do math at the third grade level — and that's not asking too much. Testing is the only way to identify and help students who are falling behind. This nation will not go back to the days of simply shuffling children along from grade to grade without them learning the basics. I refuse to give up on any child — and the No Child Left Behind Act is opening the door of opportunity to all of ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... of any poverty of invention, as of the absolute limitation of the number of possible situations. The utmost of novelty that any plot-maker may hope to attain now in the twentieth century is only the result of his own shuffling of the same pack with which all the plot-makers of the past have been playing. A new principle he can scarcely hope to invent for himself; and all that he can safely claim for his most original sequence of scenes is a ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews
... sink, white and blistering to the sight; over a silt bank crumbly as flour; and on and yet on; across the dusty sage-smelling parched plain . . . they moved; always following the tracks; tracks confused and doubling back as if the hind horse lagged; with blood drip and shuffling dragging hoofs; always keeping the dust whirl of the fore horizon in view; on and on, ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... living things ran among them, crying to them, touching them, caressing them. Love invaded his spirit and made his body tingle. He thought of the workers in the Chicago warehouse and of the millions of others workers who in that great city, in all cities, everywhere, went at the end of the day shuffling off along the streets to their houses carrying with them no song, no hope, nothing but a few paltry dollars with which to buy food and keep the endless hurtful scheme of things alive. "There is a curse on my country," he cried. "Everyone has come here for gain, to grow rich, to achieve. ...
— Marching Men • Sherwood Anderson
... morning out, the steward of the Montauk commenced the dispensation of his news; for no sooner was he heard rattling the glasses, and shuffling plates in the pantry, than the attack was begun by Mr. Dodge, in whom "a laudable thirst after knowledge," as exemplified in putting questions, was rather a besetting principle. This gentleman had come out in the ship, as has been mentioned, ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... sound of the bell was heard once more. "That's the other one," said the soldier; and the woman left the room with her quiet, shuffling steps. ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... poop, and nothing prevented them from talking as they passed the buckets to and from the tub under the pump and drove their brooms along the planks. They labored with the haste of men accustomed to be driven hard, with the shuffling, involuntary speed that has nothing in it of free strength or good-will. The big German four-master had gathered from the boarding-houses of Philadelphia a crew representing all the nationalities which breed sailors, and carried officers skilled in the crude arts of getting ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... The shuffling of feet ceased, the clanking of spurs, and the shouting. Nels and Monty, now reinforced by Nick Steele, were as shadows of Stewart, so closely did they follow him. Stewart waved them back and stepped down into the yard. He ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... away from the camping-ground, Cuthbert, with blows of his stick, increased the speed of the camel to a long shuffling trot, and the fire in the distance soon faded ...
— The Boy Knight • G.A. Henty
... There was the shuffling of many feet for an instant—then a pause, a pause which was full of awe—then, with a roar like thunder, six hundred throats broke into wild applause for Jesus, whom such people ever gladly heard; and straightway, ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine
... sound broke the silence of the near woods; and down through a glade on the slope above us, where darkness and day yet mingled in a bluish twilight under the close boughs, came scampering back the hogs described to us by Mr. Fett. Apparently they had recovered from their fright, for they came on at a shuffling gallop through the churchyard gate, nor hesitated until well within the enclosure. There, with much grunting, they drew to a standstill and eyed us, backing a little, and sidling off by twos and threes among the ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... had removed their coats and hung them across the backs of chairs, evidently intending a serious session. In this procedure the last of the party now followed suit,—the Honorable William Jones, state senator from Belmont, Missouri. Seating himself, the latter now in turn began shuffling a pack between fingers short, puffy, freckled and experienced. His stooped shoulders thrust forward a beardless round face, whose permanently arched eyebrows seemed to ask a continuous question, his short, dark hair receded from a high ...
— The Purchase Price • Emerson Hough |
