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More "Jack-in-the-box" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... conceived a mechanical 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 ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 21, 1919. • Various
... a born hostess. She had been prompt to grasp the fact that guests should be amused as well as fed, prompt to realize that a family skeleton can easily be converted to a family Jack-in-the-box, if only he can be snatched from the closet and manipulated with a little tact. Upon the first occasion of her father's failure to line up beside her in season to receive his guests, she had gone in search of him a little petulantly, had reappeared ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... greatest pleasure, but Scudamore would not take more than fifty, to support him until he could obtain a ship. Then with hearty good-will, and life-long faith in each other, the two men parted, and Scudamore's heart was uncommonly low—for a substance that was not a "Jack-in-the-box"—as he watched from the shore the slow fading into ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... ain't 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
... like a jack-in-the-box. The warm steam was pleasant. He looked about him to see the other boys being placed in like positions. Raymond had the box on one side, and Reddy Ray ...
— The Young Pitcher • Zane Grey
... 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. However, I went straight to the spot from ...
— Birds of the Indian Hills • Douglas Dewar
... in the nursery, where our holiday garments were made, black clothes were being cut for us also, and I remember having my mourning dress fitted. I was pleased because it was a new one. I tried to manufacture a suit for my Berlin Jack-in-the-box from the scraps that fell from the dressmaker's table. Nothing amuses a child so much as to imitate what older people are doing. We were forbidden to laugh, but after a few days our mother no longer checked our mirth. Of our stay at Scheveningen I ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... ninny! Don't you see that your obstinacy is injuring Tom Channing? Yorke is going in for the seniorship; is sure to get it—if it's true that Pye has given the promise to Lady Augusta. But, let it come out that he was the Jack-in-the-box, and his chance falls to the ground. And you won't say a word to do ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... 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
... true of last week's Macbeth; for the whole third act was marred by a grievously humorous misadventure. Several minutes too soon the ghost of Banquo joined the party, and after having sat helpless a while at a table, was ignominiously withdrawn. Twice was this ghostly Jack-in-the-box obtruded on the stage before his time; twice removed again; and yet he showed so little hurry when he was really wanted, that, after an awkward pause, Macbeth had to begin his apostrophe to empty ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 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 "interested" him. ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... an attempt at severity, "quite your knack of ignoring disagreeable facts. There was Montani right in front of me, jumping like a jack-in-the-box every time you flourished your fan. There's that fellow we've got locked ...
— Lady Larkspur • Meredith Nicholson
... clock struck two, Mrs. Warren rose with a Jack-in-the-box effect from behind the table where she had ensconced herself after welcoming the last arrival. Mrs. Warren had taught school before her marriage and under the stimulus of her present responsibility, her voice and manner reverted ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... met with somebody who was vastly more concerned about the animal's impending fate. This was old Joe McEvoy himself, who, out of the mouth of a steep, sandy boreen, sprang up suddenly, like a jack-fn-the-box-one of the shock-wigged, saturnine-complexioned pattern. But no jack-in-the-box could have looked so flurriedly distracted, or have muttered to itself such queer execrations as he ...
— Stories by English Authors: Ireland • Various
... stone floor. The voices ceased abruptly. And then, like a jack-in-the-box, there popped through the trap ...
— The Prince and Betty - (American edition) • P. G. Wodehouse
... victoria, like a huge Jack-in-the-box, shot up a figure, and he recognized Mrs. Hawthorne standing at full height in the moving carriage, and waving both hands, as he must suppose, nobody else ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... Curly Baxter, bobbing up like a jack-in-the-box; "I've heard lots about that same place. It's troubled with a mystery, and only last week I heard Paddy Reilly say he'd never go there fishin' again if he was paid for it. He's dreadfully afraid of ghosts, ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Afloat • George A. Warren
... was there to worship, and did not discern her earthly lover, whose longing looks were glued to her, and his body rose and sank with the true worshippers, but with no more spirituality than a piston or a Jack-in-the-box. ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... at the top in a sort of trap-door, and Dorothy popped up through it like a jack-in-the-box; but instead of coming out, as she expected, among the branches of the tree, she found herself in a wide, open field as flat as a pancake, and with a small house standing far out in the middle of it. It was ...
— The Admiral's Caravan • Charles E. Carryl
... fitfully, but with the regularity of well-trained will-o'-the-wisps, made a panorama not easily forgotten. Every minute or two, as the engine paused, the miner whose platform had reached the top sprang suddenly, like a jack-in-the-box, out of the opening into which we were gazing, touched his hat, and disappeared into the town. Long as we waited, the procession was not yet ended when we had to go back to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... instantly apparent, are suffered to occupy the foreground. We know all too well, in everyday experience, that tension is not really relaxed by a temporary distraction. The dread of a coming ordeal in the witness-box or on the operating-table may be forcibly crushed down like a child's jack-in-the-box; but we are always conscious of the effort to compress it, and we know that it will spring up again the moment that effort ceases. Sir Arthur Pinero's play, The Profligate, was written at a time when it was the fashion to give each act a sub-title; and one of its acts is headed "The Sword of Damocles." ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... there, looking out 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
... that curious room not unwillingly, I think. Uncle Oldys's orders were carried out that same day. And so," concludes Mr. Spearman, "Whitminster has a Bluebeard's chamber, and, I am rather inclined to suspect, a Jack-in-the-box, awaiting some future occupant of the residence of the ...
— A Thin Ghost and Others • M. R. (Montague Rhodes) James
... on his pillow. But it visited him at intervals, and sometimes in the strangest places—suddenly, abruptly, in the stillness of an Indian temple, or amid the shrillness of an Oriental crowd. He became familiar with it at last; he called it his Jack-in-the-box. Some invisible touch of circumstance would press the spring, and the little image would pop up, staring him in the face and grinning an interrogation. Bernard always clapped down the lid, for he regarded this phenomenon ...
— Confidence • Henry James
... 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, or a toy ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... 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
... expecting an upset, and prepared for the worst. A note was dashed off in two minutes,—signed, sealed, addressed, in half a minute, and Mr Sudberry leaped off his stool. His hat was thrown on his head by a species of sleight of hand, and he appeared in the outer office suddenly, like a stout Jack-in-the-box. ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne
... an intellectual and emotional vacuum; and beware of trying to classify people too definitely into types; you will find that all through their youth they will persist annoyingly in jumping from class to class, and by pasting a supercilious label on every one you meet you are merely packing a Jack-in-the-box that will spring up and leer at you when you begin to come into really antagonistic contact with the world. An idealization of some such a man as Leonardo da Vinci would be a more valuable beacon to ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... largely in her view of things. Because we were poor, she denied our claim to equality; because Carrie taught her children, she snubbed and repressed her, to keep her in her place, as though Carrie were a sort of Jack-in-the-box to be ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... Besides, this portion of the marsh was strange to me, as I had only seen it at a distance from the lower end of the bay, where I generally shot. I was within range of the ducks now, and had raised my hammers—I still shoot a hammer-gun—when a human voice rang out. Then, like some weird jack-in-the-box, there popped out from the mound a straight, long-waisted body in black ...
— A Village of Vagabonds • F. Berkeley Smith
... The lettering was red and gold. In one corner, he painted a picture of a little boy and girl in their nightgowns peeking up a chimney-place hung with stockings. In the other corner, the full-moon face of a Santa Claus popped like a jolly jack-in-the-box from a chimney-top. A troop of reindeer, dragging a sleigh full of toys, scurried through the printing. The whole thing was enclosed in ...
— Maida's Little Shop • Inez Haynes Irwin
... wholly at ease before since the day in the summer when she had first seen Mr. Graham, and for the past days she had lived in torture. The removal of the burden was almost like unsnapping the cover of a Jack-in-the-box. She was going to be good and straight and honest again. She was going to make amends, so far as in her lay, for the wrong she had done. ...
— Elsie Marley, Honey • Joslyn Gray
... some group of congenial 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
... twisted into a grimace of fiery contempt, throwing, with his big and muscular arms, rug after rug to the anxious young peasants who filed before him. They all gazed at his legs in the billowing red trousers; some like children regarding a Jack-in-the-box which had just sprung up into view, others like ignorant, but superstitious, people who had unexpectedly come upon a shrine by the wayside. One or two seemed disposed to laugh nervously, as the very stupid laugh at anything they see for the ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... door moved over to this position, her head and shoulders rose through the opening. Had her movements been quick, instead of deliberate, they would have suggested the action of the familiar Jack-in-the-box. ...
— The Great Cattle Trail • Edward S. Ellis
... reached the village school-room they found the other members of the company in low spirits, for they had received a blow. Johnnie Chorley, who was to have been "Jack-in-the-box," had so bad a cold that he ...
— Our Frank - and other stories • Amy Walton
... Murray released his clutch on the hatch it snapped back, and out over the closed doors of the companionway shot the Cap'n, a whiskered jack-in-the-box, ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... costume, his eyeballs starting from his head with surprise and terror. One gaze he gave, one yell, and then fled into the bushes like a wild cat. The next moment Jack went through exactly the same performance, the only difference being that his movements were less like those of Jack-in-the-box, though not less vigorous and ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
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