"Gymnastic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... virtues to which success is fore-ordained, if he would be master of the future in a large way. Providence is helping him by the discipline of present exigences, making even the wrongs and hardships he is suffering a gymnastic to eliminate weakness and develop moral power. His ambition is chastened, his indolence is rebuked, his patience, courage, and persistence are being trained. But Providence waits for us to give him more direct assistance in this matter. We can re-enforce ...
— The American Missionary - Vol. 44, No. 3, March, 1890 • Various
... imperative necessity of psychic science, not that barren abstraction called psychology in colleges, but a science which, like a faithful mirror, reveals to us that which we cannot see. As the gymnastic teacher reveals by a system of measurement (anthropometry) the defective muscles that need development, so should the psychologist discover in the conformation of the brain the special culture needed by ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various
... great tents, hung with boughs and lighted with innumerable colored lamps, where the people danced their country dances in a choking cloud of dry saw-dust. Conjurors and gymnastic performers were showing off on conspicuous platforms, and a continual sound of drums, cymbals and shrill trumpets called the attention of the crowd to some "Wonderful Exhibition"—some infant phenomenon, giant, or three-headed pig. A great part of the ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... Abbey street, a volume of peccaminous pornographical tendency entituled SWEETS OF SIN, anonymous author a gentleman of fashion, a temporary concussion caused by a falsely calculated movement in the course of a postcenal gymnastic display, the victim (since completely recovered) being Stephen Dedalus, professor and author, eldest surviving son of Simon Dedalus, of no fixed occupation, an aeronautical feat executed by him (narrator) in the presence of a witness, the professor ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... excursions of several miles were made through the beautiful scenery of the surrounding country. In summer the children went frequently to bathe in the lake, the borders of which offered, in winter, fine opportunities for skating. In bad weather they resorted to gymnastic exercises in a large hall expressly fitted up for that purpose. This constant attention to regular bodily exercise, together with the excellent climate of Yverdon, and the simplicity of their mode of living, proved so effectual in ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... the suspended insect raises itself and fixes the talons of the anterior limbs in the empty skin above it. Never did acrobat, hanging by the toes to the bar of a trapeze, raise himself with so stupendous a display of strength in the loins. This gymnastic feat ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... yourself, Graham; you injured it, and I bound it up, that is all. When gentlemen amuse themselves with such gymnastic feats as you performed, they must expect a little temporary inconvenience from crushed bones and overstrained muscles. Beulah, mind my directions ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... sang, or repeated a couplet, which the others repeated enthusiastically. Then they got up with some difficulty, and while the two women, who were rather dizzy, were getting some fresh air, the two males, who were altogether drunk, were performing gymnastic tricks. Heavy, limp, and with scarlet faces, they hung awkwardly on to the iron rings, without being able to raise themselves, while their shirts were continually threatening to part company with their trousers, and to flap in the ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... the evening, conducted by Miss Page, valedictorian of the graduating class, was peculiarly rich and helpful in its reminiscences, forecastings and inspirations. All the graduates go out as earnest Christians. The boys' gymnastic exhibition on Monday evening drew a very interested audience, and the eighth grade exercises on Tuesday morning were admirable. The alumni meeting was the largest that has ever been held, one-third of the alumni having been in attendance. Two ...
— The American Missionary — Volume 48, No. 7, July, 1894 • Various
... LUNGS.—Gymnastic exercises, such as develop the chest and lungs, are of great importance, since they regulate the ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... days, who bleared their eyes over the midnight furnace, and macerated their bodies by out watching the Polar Bear. He indulged in all courtly pleasures, and until he grew corpulent, had excelled in all martial sports and gymnastic exercises, as well as in the use of arms; insomuch, that Janus Pannonius [a Hungarian poet of the fifteenth century] has left a Latin epigram upon a wrestling match betwixt Galeotti and a renowned champion of that art, in the presence ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... forget the sensations I experienced in making the passage of the huaro. I had felt giddy enough in going over the 'soga' bridges and 'barbacoas' common throughout Peru, but the passage of the huaro is really a gymnastic feat of no easy accomplishment. I was first tied, back downwards, with my back resting in the concavity of the bent wood; my legs were then crossed over the main rope—the bridge itself—with nothing to hold them there farther ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... was a weak delusion. When I stretched out my limbs it was only to find that the ordinary conveniences for making several people distinctly uncomfortable were distributed throughout my individual frame. At last, resting my arms on the straps, by dint of much gymnastic effort I became sufficiently composed to be aware of a more refined species of torture. The springs of the stage, rising and falling regularly, produced a rhythmical beat which began to absorb my attention painfully. ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... tall trees, that overshadow an angle of the schoolhouse; and the larger scholars play some very surprising gymnastic tricks upon their lower limbs: one boy, for instance, will hang for an incredible length of time by his feet with his head down; and when you tell Charlie of it at night, with such additions as your boyish ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell
... raged in a certain city one of those fashionable epidemics which occasionally attack our youthful population. It wasn't the music mania, nor gymnastic convulsions, nor that wide-spread malady, croquet. Neither was it one of the new dances which, like a tarantula-bite, set every one a twirling, nor stage madness, nor yet that American lecturing influenza which yearly sweeps over the land. No, it was a new disease called the ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott
... physical condition and to laugh at the doctor we must keep out of doors as much as possible. Gymnasium work of course will help us to build up our strength and develop our muscles, but skill in various acrobatics and gymnastic tricks does not give the clear eye and ruddy cheek of the person whose life is in the open air. Outdoor sports, like tennis, baseball, and horseback riding are far superior to chestweights or Indian clubs as a means of obtaining normal ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... bows, arrows, and quivers. Stella, as Maid Marian, and Phyllis, as the Curtle Friar, were especial successes; while Will Scarlett and Little John gave a noble display of fencing with quarter-staves, a part of the program which they had practiced in secrecy, under the instruction of the gymnastic mistress, and now presented as a complete surprise to the school. Their acting was so spirited that everybody was quite sorry when the short piece was ended, and would have liked certain scenes repeated, had not Miss Morley pointed ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... size!" said the little man, quietly. "Nature gave me a powerful, though small, frame, and I have increased my strength by gymnastic exercise." ...
— Driven From Home - Carl Crawford's Experience • Horatio Alger
... Fame, big as her cheeks, and a ten thousand of that sort would never think of retreating. Their spectral advance on quaking London through Kentish hopgardens, Sussex corn-fields, or by the pleasant hills of Surrey, after a gymnastic leap over the riband of salt water, haunted many pillows. And now those horrid shouts of the legions of Caesar, crying to the inheritor of an invading name to lead them against us, as the origin of his ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... be done now in the garden, we may mention that in dry weather all walks and pathways should be swept and rolled, which latter operation, like that of digging, ought to be done by a labourer, although dragging a garden-roller has been described as an excellent gymnastic exercise. Grass should be mowed on every favourable opportunity; and where turf has been much worn away, or where it is uneven, the objectionable portions must be removed ...
— Little Folks (November 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... by the youths will take place to-morrow, the 24th. Tradition, no less than the distinguished character of the festival, requires that they should do their utmost in the gymnastic display. Two performances." Signed by Dioskourides, magistrate ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, And Assyria In The Light Of Recent Discovery • L.W. King and H.R. Hall
... made you notice his long, pointed wings if he had been near you, and they were well worth noticing; for besides just flying with them,—which was wonderful enough, as he was a talented flier,—he used them in a sort of gymnastic stunt he was fond of performing ...
— Bird Stories • Edith M. Patch
... to perform absurd, laughable, or impossible cures. One man wants to be made clever, another to be made fat, another to be cured of insanity, another of tobacco, another of whisky, another of hunger, another of tea; another wants to be made strong, so as to conquer in gymnastic exercises; most men want medicine to make their beards grow; while almost every man, woman, and child wants to have his or her skin made as white as ...
— James Gilmour of Mongolia - His diaries, letters, and reports • James Gilmour
... stirred the idlers on the benches in the Court-house yard. Squire Buckalew (sidelong at the others but squarely at Eskew) had volunteered the information that Cory was a reformed priest. Stung by the mystery of Eskew's silence, the Squire's imagination had become magically gymnastic; and if anything under heaven could have lifted the veil, this was the thing. Mr. Arp's ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... very favourite game, did not choose, to be caught napping, and therefore "took his rest" at the end of the fifth half-year, and in so doing rent the whole fabric of the club.—The Edgbaston Art Club was organised in 1878; the Chess Club in 1841; the Germania Club in 1856; the Gymnastic Club in 1866; the Dramatic Club in May, 1865; the Farmer's Club in May, 1864, the Pigeon flying Club at Quilter's in 1875, &c., &c. Club law has great attractions for the Brums—every profession and every trade hath its club, and all the "fanciers" of every sort and kind club by themselves, till ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... every period of life, and in the exercise of every faculty, bodily, mental, and moral. It is this which gives us pleasure in solitary exercises of physical strength, in climbing mountains, swimming, lifting heavy weights, performing difficult gymnastic feats. It is this, more than deliberate cruelty, that induces boys to torture animals, or to oppress and torment their ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody
... the "Sokol" Gymnastic Association, was imprisoned, but was again released owing to lack of proofs. A similar fate also met the Czech Social Democratic leader Dr. Soukup, who was for ...
— Independent Bohemia • Vladimir Nosek
... bitter disappointment was led by the eager German youth, who, inspired by liberal ideals, now thirsted for freedom of thought, of speech, and of action. Friedrich Ludwig Jahn, a German patriot, organized everywhere Turnvereine, or gymnastic clubs, as a tangible form of expressing this demand. Among the students of the universities liberal patriotic clubs called Burschenschaften were organized, idealistic in their aims and impractical in their propaganda, where "every man with his bonnet on his head, a pot of beer in ...
— Our Foreigners - A Chronicle of Americans in the Making • Samuel P. Orth
... to seize upon. Trunks of palm or other trees with their bark still on them unite the banks by a shaky and infirm foot-bridge which, if not a very secure crossing, is nevertheless a wonderful contrivance for gymnastic exercises in preserving one's balance, a thing not to be despised. The boys bathing in the river are amused by the difficulties of the old woman crossing with a basket on her head or by the antics of the old man who moves tremblingly and loses his ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... perform in open daylight many of the things which they pretend to accomplish by spirits in the dark, I will promptly pay $500 for the sight. In the mean time, I think I can reasonably account for and explain all pretended spiritual gymnastic performances—throwings of hair-brushes—dancing pianos—spirit-rapping—table-tipping—playing of musical instruments, and flying through the air (in the dark,) and a thousand other "wonderful manifestations" which, like most of the performances ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... inferiority keenly. Not only was Ernest an excellent shot, but at the end of a long day's sport he would come in apparently fresh and untired, while Harry, although bodily far the most powerful, would be completely done up; and at gymnastic exercises he could do with ease feats which Harry could at first not even attempt. In this respect, however, the English lad in three months' time was able to rival him. His disgust at finding himself so easily beaten by a French boy nerved him to the greatest exertions, and his ...
— In the Reign of Terror - The Adventures of a Westminster Boy • G. A. Henty
... and their boy chums were too active to remain quiet long, even after plum pudding. Allen was the first to become restless, and the others soon caught it from him. He rose, went through some gymnastic exercises, then looked about him curiously. "I wonder if there are any more places like this hereabout?" he said. "Does anybody want to take a little tramp and find out? You look about as energetic as a bunch of turtles. Come on, let's ...
— The Outdoor Girls on Pine Island - Or, A Cave and What It Contained • Laura Lee Hope
... subject of my inferior stature led me to a determination to try what gymnastic practice could do to remedy the defect. For some thirty years, gymnastics, first introduced into this country, I believe, at the Round-Hill School at Northampton, then under the charge of Messrs. Cogswell and Bancroft, had languished and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... staccato, of its own chords on the great. The interlude is a tender melody, beautifully managed. The two "Concert Pieces" are marked by a large simplicity in treatment, and have this rare merit, that they are less gymnastic exercises than expressions of feeling. A fiery "Triumphal March," a delightful "Canzonetta," and a noble "Larghetto," of sombre, yet rich and well-modulated, colors, complete the list of his works for the organ. None of ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... to get the old and the new emotions comfortably adjusted, but Mrs Jo helped him, and Mr Laurie gave him some wise advice upon the astonishing gymnastic feats the human heart can perform, and be all the better for it if it only held fast to the balancing-pole of truth and common sense. At last our Tommy got his bearings, and as autumn came on Plumfield saw but little of him; for his new ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... leisurely observed them, that there was an intrenchment thrown across the straits, and that the Spartans were in front of it. There were other forces behind, but these the horseman could not see. The Spartans were engaged, some of them in athletic sports and gymnastic exercises, and the rest in nicely arranging their dress, which was red and showy in color, though simple and plain in form, and in smoothing, adjusting, and curling their hair. In fact, they seemed to be, one and ...
— Xerxes - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... in other matters connected with the course of instruction they were going through: gymnastic exercises, fencing and boxing, and the drill called fire-quarters, in which the whole battalion is formed into a fire-brigade, and when the fire-bell is sounded each cadet hastens to his proper place in the troop, and the steam fire-engine and hose-carriages belonging ...
— Elsie's Vacation and After Events • Martha Finley
... of course, not often possible for a teacher to occupy herself six hours a day with a single class in a primary school, especially if she confines her attention to the studies enumerated. In many schools, of various grades, gymnastic exercises have been introduced with marked advantage. There are many such exercises which do not need apparatus, and in which the teacher ...
— Thoughts on Educational Topics and Institutions • George S. Boutwell
... She had a quaint French accent, but she couldn't sing. She had no voice. And after that one doggerel verse she made a gesture of good-humoured contempt and danced. But she couldn't dance either. It was a wild gymnastic—a display of incredible, riotous energy, the delirious caperings of a gutter-urchin caught in the midst of some gutter-urchin's windfall by a jolly tune. A long-haired youth leapt on to the stage from the stage-box, and caught her by the waist and swung her about ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... carried my corpse down the stage with a fine semblance of frenzy, "Jove, Fanny, you are a lift!") Finding that all argument and remonstrance was unavailing, and that Miss Tree, though by no means other than a good friend and fellow-worker of mine, was bent upon performing this gymnastic feat, I said at last, "If you attempt to lift or carry me down the stage, I will kick and scream till you set me down," which ended the controversy. I do not know whether she believed me, but she did ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... that this must have been the great secret of the perfection to which the Greek and Roman sculptors brought their works; as they constantly contemplated the display of the human form in all its beauty in their various gymnastic exercises, which enabled them to transfer to marble such ease and elegance as we, living in an age of coats and breeches, never shall ...
— A Narrative of a Nine Months' Residence in New Zealand in 1827 • Augustus Earle
... My bed is a simple hammock of aloes-fibre, slung in a corner; very low divans, and huge tapestry arm-chairs, for the rest of the furniture. Hung up on the wainscoting are pistols, guns, masks, foils, gloves, plastrons, dumb-bells and other gymnastic equipments. My favorite horse is installed in the opposite angle, in a box of bois des iles, a precaution that secures him from the brutalizing society of grooms, and keeps him ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... already. In Egypt the girls as well as the boys are kept to such gymnastic exercises. My limbs were trained to flexibility by running, postures, and ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... sliding, or driving each other forward on great pieces of ice. "Dancing with swords" was a favourite form of amusement among the young men of Northern nations, and in those parts of England where the Norsemen and Danes settled, this graceful gymnastic custom long lingered. ...
— Old English Sports • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... was exhibited; afterward were added wrestling, leaping, quoiting, darting, boxing, a more complicated species of foot-race (the Diaulus and Dolichus), and the chariot and horse-races. The Pentathlon was a contest of five gymnastic exercises combined. The chariot-races [110] preceded those of the riding horses, as in Grecian war the use of chariots preceded the more scientific employment of cavalry, and were the most attractive ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... in coition, which is especially affected, even by modest women, throughout the East and they have many books teaching the genial art. In China there are professors, mostly old women, who instruct young girls in this branch of the gymnastic. ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... kindly, patient creature, with a pathetically grave face. He never smiled; he never made a remark; he always gathered me tenderly up when I plunged off, and helped me on again without a word. When he had been teaching me twice a day for three weeks I introduced a new gymnastic—one that he had never seen before—and so at last a compliment was wrung from him, a thing which I had been risking my life for days to achieve. He gathered me up and said mournfully: "Mr. Clemens, you can fall off a bicycle in more different ways than any person ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... a fight I had that night—for it was more like night than morning. I walked fast; I tried all sorts of gymnastic attitudes; I leaped up, caught hold of an iron bar and swung by my arms, and whenever I did these things I grew as lively as a cricket; but as soon as, from utter weariness, I ceased, the horrible drowsiness came on again, and as I walked I actually dreamed that there ...
— Patience Wins - War in the Works • George Manville Fenn
... by which praise is won, Leon Battista was from his childhood the first. Of his various gymnastic feats and exercises we read with astonishment how, with his feet together, he could spring over a man's head; how in the cathedral, he threw a coin in the air till it was heard to ring against the distant roof; how the wildest horses trembled under him. In three things he desired to appear ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... spectators from Asia as well as all the States of Greece, led to similar institutions or festivals in other places. The Pythian games, in honor of Apollo, were celebrated near Delphi every third Olympic year; and various musical contests, exercises in poetry, exhibitions of works of art were added to gymnastic exercises and chariot and horse races. The sacrifices, processions, and other solemnities, resemble those at Olympia in honor of Zeus. They lasted as long as the Olympic games, down to A.D. 394. Wherever the worship of Apollo was introduced, there were ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... have swings, constructed either by looping two flexible rope-like tree stems together at the bottom, or with a single rope, with a loop at the bottom, in which to place their feet. But there are no racing or jumping or gymnastic games, and no ...
— The Mafulu - Mountain People of British New Guinea • Robert W. Williamson
... called in by our excellent Emperor to take part and advise upon the following case. Under the will of a certain person, it has been the custom at Vienne to hold a gymnastic contest. Trebonius Rufus, a man of high principle and a personal friend of mine, in his capacity of duumvir, discontinued and abolished the custom, and it was objected that he had no legal authority to do so. He pleaded his case not only with eloquence but to ...
— The Letters of the Younger Pliny - Title: The Letters of Pliny the Younger - - Series 1, Volume 1 • Pliny the Younger
... do so too, Melesias? If you were deliberating about the gymnastic training of your son, would you follow the advice of the majority of us, or the opinion of the one who had been trained and ...
— Laches • Plato
... meat, cattle, fuel, fish, commodious courts of justice, public halls for all societies, bourses, meeting places, armouries, [608]in which shall be kept engines for quenching of fire, artillery gardens, public walks, theatres, and spacious fields allotted for all gymnastic sports, and honest recreations, hospitals of all kinds, for children, orphans, old folks, sick men, mad men, soldiers, pest-houses, &c. not built precario, or by gouty benefactors, who, when by fraud and rapine they have extorted all their lives, oppressed ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... Library (to which he has presented more than five thousand books), a Working Men's Club and Newsroom, a Choral Society, supplied with an excellent library of music; a Recreation Club, provided with a bowling green; and a cricket ground, with quoits, and gymnastic apparatus, Mr. Akroyd has also allotted a large field to his workmen, dividing it into small gardens varying from a hundred to two hundred and forty square yards each. The small rent charged for each plot is distributed ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... opposite, or western, side was the gymnastic ground, enclosed in a wire fence, but free of access at all times—a place of paramount importance in all French schools, public ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... emigrant to his lawful home was celebrated by a feast in which, by a confusion of circumstances, the book played the part of the fatted calf, being read afresh from beginning to end. During his earlier and more agile years the Rabbi used to reach the higher levels of his study by wonderful gymnastic feats, but after two falls—one with three Ante-Nicene fathers in close pursuit—he determined to call in assistance. This he did after an impressive fashion. When he attended the roup at Pitfoodles—a day of historical prices—and purchased in open competition, at three times ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... was legal, like military service.[264] All celibates were placed under the ban of society.[265] The young men were attracted to love by the privilege of watching (and it is also said assisting in) the gymnastic exercise of naked young girls, who from their earliest youth entered into contests with each other in wrestling and racing and in throwing the quoit and javelin.[266] The age of marriage was also fixed, special care being ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... astronomical and mineralogical studies. Yet the wish to try his powers as a pedagogue never deserted him; and when, in 1812, the position of teacher in the Plamann Institute in Berlin was offered him, he accepted it. During his leisure hours he devoted himself to gymnastic exercises, and even late in life his eyes sparkled when he spoke of his friend, old Jahn, and the political ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... sweaters and singlets in untidy brown parcels there stood the stout leather-jacketed vaulting horse waiting its turn to be carried up on the stage and set in the middle of the winning team at the end of the gymnastic display. ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... conjugate diameter than is the case in the Roman amphitheatres, and it is by no means so high. In the time of Napoleon, games were executed in this circus in imitation of the games of the ancients, for Napoleon had a great hankering to ape the Roman Caesars in everything. There were, for instance, gymnastic exercises, races on foot, horse races, chariot races like those of the Romans, combats of wild beasts, and as water can be introduced into the arena, there were sometimes exhibited naumachiae or naval fights. These exhibitions were extremely frequent at Milan ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... curtain covering a recess in the wall, where some of her toys and gymnastic things were kept; and from behind that curtain Watho and Falca always appeared, and behind it they vanished. How they came out of solid wall, she had not an idea, all up to the wall was open space, and all beyond it seemed wall; but clearly the first and ...
— Stephen Archer and Other Tales • George MacDonald
... taking a few dozen of oysters by way of giving them an appetite; beefsteaks dressed in the English style, a few choice French dishes, two or three sorts of wine, desert, and coffee, generally compose the repast until the dinner hour. The time is filled up with walking, riding, driving, practising gymnastic exercises, pistol-shooting, fencing, etc. After dinner, which usually terminates about eight, and is in fact the same thing as the breakfast on a more extensive scale, they proceed to the theatres; those most in vogue with the beau monde are the Italian Opera, the French Opera or ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... one of those uncomfortable people," she declared, "who loathe what they call the obvious, and adore riddles. You would commit any sort of mental gymnastic rather than answer a plain question in a ...
— The Moving Finger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... took his paws off from his master's shoulders with an injured look in his great mute eyes, and consoled himself by growling at the cow. Mr. Ryck put a sudden stop to a series of gymnastic exercises commenced between them, by throwing the creature's hay down upon her horns; then he watered his horse, fed the sheep, took a look at the hens, and closed all the doors tightly; for the night was cold, so cold that he shivered, even under ...
— Men, Women, and Ghosts • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... dwelt much on the lad's intellectual fearlessness. "At present," he had written, "he is influenced more by curiosity than by a care for truth, according to the character of the young. Certainly, he differs strikingly from his equals in age, by his passion for a vigorous intellectual gymnastic, such as the supine character of their minds renders distasteful to most young men, but in which he shows a fearlessness that at times makes me fancy that his ultimate destination may be the military life; for indeed the ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Pater
... Before he can tell what cadences he truly prefers, the student should have tried all that are possible; before he can choose and preserve a fitting key of language, he should long have practised the literary scales; and it is only after years of such gymnastic that he can sit down at last, legions of words swarming to his call, dozens of turns of phrase simultaneously bidding for his choice, and he himself knowing what he wants to do and (within the narrow limit of a man's ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... exorcism. And yet they are vastly serviceable for checking unprofitable discussion and stopping the mouths of babes and sucklings. And when a young man comes to a certain stage of intellectual growth, the examination of these counters forms a gymnastic at once amusing ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a practical, unimaginative race. Their speech and their art were both alike without ornament. They developed the body rather than the mind. Their education was almost wholly gymnastic and military. They were unexcelled as warriors. The most important city founded by them was Sparta, the rival ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... converted into baths, and you will then form a notion of the size of the imperial thermae of Rome. But a notion of the size only. Imagine every entertainment for mind and body—enumerate all the gymnastic games our fathers invented—repeat all the books Italy and Greece have produced—suppose places for all these games, admirers for all these works—add to this, baths of the vastest size, the most complicated construction—intersperse ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... natural food of mice is grain, but in captivity they are generally fed on bread and milk and slices of apple. They can be tamed to a small extent, but for the most part they do no more than run round a wheel, although if other gymnastic contrivances are offered them they will probably do something with them. Dormice (to whose food you may add nuts) sleep through the winter months, and are therefore not very interesting for more than ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... farther, I desire to answer a question which wise educators have asked:—"Do children require special gymnastic training?" An eminent writer has recently declared his conviction that boys need no studied muscle-culture. "Give them," he says, "the unrestrained use of the grove, the field, the yard, the street, with the various sorts of apparatus for boys' games and sports, and they can well dispense ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... size in London, and the bed itself was a perfect triumph of littleness, so tucked under the sloping roof, and so surrounded by projecting corners, as to make the entry to it or the exit from it a gymnastic performance of considerable merit. The room was not over-light at the best of times, the fourth part of the space of one small window in the sloping wall was filled by its own heavy framework, and for half its height it was shielded by a parapet, which had at least its uses in hiding ...
— Young Mr. Barter's Repentance - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... for boys, and preferred establishing his school in this cool climate than in the hot town beneath. He was kind enough to show us all his arrangements. As it was near evening when we paid our visit, school was already over; but he presented all his scholars to us, made them perform a few gymnastic exercises, and proposed several questions on geography, history, arithmetic, etc., which, without exception, they answered very carefully and correctly. His establishment receives sixty boys, and was quite full, although ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... divided from like, and another in which the good is separated from the bad. The latter of the two is termed purification; and again, of purification, there are two sorts,—of animate bodies (which may be internal or external), and of inanimate. Medicine and gymnastic are the internal purifications of the animate, and bathing the external; and of the inanimate, fulling and cleaning and other humble processes, some of which have ludicrous names. Not that dialectic is a respecter of names or persons, or a ...
— Sophist • Plato
... clutching the refractory sheets and blankets. But I soon experienced a fresh evil. The canvas strip was very narrow, and as my shoulders were not, they abutted on each side, courting the cold. Even this difficulty I finally conquered by gymnastic subtleties. Warmth and comfort produced their natural effect. My brain was busy for a few minutes. Thoughts of my wife and the few I loved best made me womanish, but a recollection of the malignant judge hardened me and I clenched my teeth. Then Nature asserted her sway. Weary eyelids drooped ...
— Prisoner for Blasphemy • G. W. [George William] Foote
... producing wearing apparel for men, women, and children," the four classes into which it was divided represented: Clothing to measure for men and boys; ordinary costumes, suits for hunting and riding, leather breeches and similar articles; suits for gymnastic uses and games, military and civil uniforms, campaign clothing of special types, robes and costumes for magistrates, members of the bar, professors, ecclesiastics, etc., liveries, various costumes for children. Clothing, ready-made, for men and boys. Clothing to measure for women and girls; ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... disciplined for a soldier's life. The Spartan men likewise fed at public tables, and slept in barracks, only making occasional visits to their own houses. No money was in circulation except iron: no one was permitted to possess gold or silver. Girls were separately drilled in gymnastic exercises and made to be as hardy as boys. Marriage was regulated by the State. There was more purity, and women had a higher standing, in Sparta than in other parts of Greece. The strength of the Spartan army was in the hoplites, or heavy-armed infantry. In battle, messmates stood together. ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... to him rather early and did not find him in his study. He called to me from the next room; sounds of panting and splashing reached me from there. Every morning Fustov took a cold shower-bath and afterwards for a quarter of an hour practised gymnastic exercises, in which he had attained remarkable proficiency. Excessive anxiety about one's physical health he did not approve of, but he did not neglect necessary care. ('Don't neglect yourself, don't over-excite yourself, work in moderation,' was his precept.) Fustov had not yet ...
— The Jew And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... and Isis, it was held, were owing civilization, the discovery of agriculture, laws, arts of all kinds, religious worship, temples, the invention of letters, astronomy, the gymnastic arts, and music; and thus they were the universal benefactors. Osiris travelled to civilize the countries which he passed through, and communicate to them his valuable discoveries. He built cities, and taught men to cultivate the earth. Wheat and wine ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... to act like young gentlemen and not like brutes, Garrison," returned the gymnastic instructor warmly. "However, if you wish to place Brown among the substitutes, I will not oppose you. His weight might help you to win some game if it was running very close and some of your best players dropped out." And so it ...
— The Rover Boys at Colby Hall - or The Struggles of the Young Cadets • Arthur M. Winfield
... Cambridge the various Commons and other places open for the gymnastic games, and the like public amusements, are usually denominated Pieces."—Alma Mater, London, 1827, Vol. ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... who do not take so enthusiastically to monkeys as his junior readers, Mr. Darwin has provided a rather less gymnastic ancestry. How would you like to have a fish for your forefather? If it were one of Neptune's noble tritons, or the Philistine fish-god, Dagon, or a mermaid, it might not be so repulsive as the ape; or even a twenty-pound ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... classical school for girls, in which she is not only training their minds to vigorous thought, but taking the initiative steps to secure for them an equally vigorous physical development. Her pupils are required to wear a comfortable gymnastic costume, all their garments loosely resting on their shoulders; corsets, tight waists and high-heeled boots forbidden, for deep thinking requires deep breathing. The whole upper floor of her new building is a spacious gymnasium, where her pupils exercise every day under the instruction ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... the gymnastic exercises suppose that a man has torn thee with his nails, and by dashing against thy head has inflicted a wound. Well, we neither show any signs of vexation, nor are we offended, nor do we suspect him afterwards as a treacherous fellow; and yet we are on ...
— Thoughts of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus • Marcus Aurelius Antoninus
... a number of people, and Mr. Salt, no wiser than his neighbors, pushed his way, when the doors were opened, into the room. There, on a sort of stage, he saw a tall and powerfully-built young man, performing various gymnastic exercises, and feats of strength. While this Hercules in tinsel was lifting enormous weights, and jumping from a table over the heads of twelve men, a pretty, delicate-looking young woman, was arranging some hydraulic machines and musical glasses, with which the entertainment ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... also a very large play-ground, and in it their kind teacher had had a number of gymnastic poles put up, for their healthy exercise and amusement. There was one very high pole, with four strong ropes fastened to the top of it, and an iron ring at the ends of the ropes. The boys would take ...
— The Apple Dumpling and Other Stories for Young Boys and Girls • Unknown
... that Bob and Dick should run races across the common on their way towards the south parade, in which gymnastic display Miss Nellie and Rover both joined, for company sake as well as to set a good example; the big black retriever going over more ground than either of the competitors ere they reached 'The Moorings,' as Mrs ...
— Bob Strong's Holidays - Adrift in the Channel • John Conroy Hutcheson
... away through a screen of young firs. There, however, was the fact before me, and with delightful visions of broiled salmon before my eyes, I dropped my pack and ran forward to secure the prize before it should take it into its head to make another gymnastic leap into ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... I managed to get on to Peter's shoulders, and by a considerable gymnastic effort to raise my head to the level of the ledge, and at the same time to cast the light up ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang
... Gymnastic exercises, dignified with this name, upon the occasion of a death or funeral, were common to many tribes. It is thus described by Morgan: [Footnote: League of the Iroquois, ...
— An introduction to the mortuary customs of the North American Indians • H. C. Yarrow
... confirmatory evidence of the normal state of her health at that period of her college career. Its commencement was normal, without pain or excess. She performed all her college duties regularly and steadily. She studied, recited, stood at the blackboard, walked, and went through her gymnastic exercises, from the beginning to the end of the term, just as boys do. Her account of her regimen there was so nearly that of a boy's regimen, that it would puzzle a physiologist to determine, from the account alone, whether the ...
— Sex in Education - or, A Fair Chance for Girls • Edward H. Clarke
... deeply compromised in the Commune was, with one exception, the one who made his peace most rapidly with French society, and in 1890 he was received by the President of the Republic officially as elected Director of the federation of all the Gymnastic Societies of France.' [Footnote: It was perhaps on account of his youthful appearance that Pascal Grousset was described as a boy. He was only two years younger than Sir Charles, and was twenty- six at the time of the Commune. He was later, ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... pulled, it may be, by the ears when found tardy in his lesson: nor would he have him owe to a servant the obligation of so great a thing as his learning; he himself, therefore, (as we were saying,) taught him his grammar, law, and his gymnastic exercises. Nor did he only show him, too, how to throw a dart, to fight in armor, and to ride, but to box also and to endure both heat and cold, and to swim over the most rapid and rough rivers. He says, likewise, that he wrote histories, in large characters, ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... do, the next two days passed slowly. The boys went fishing and swimming, and they also did some shooting at a target which they set up behind the barn, and whiled away some time at boxing and in gymnastic exercises. Dick also spent an hour in penning a long letter to Dora Stanhope, who, as my old readers are well aware, was his dearest girl friend. Dora and her mother lived not far from Putnam Hall, and Dick and his brothers had become ...
— The Rover Boys on Treasure Isle - or The Strange Cruise of the Steam Yacht. • Edward Stratemeyer (AKA Arthur M. Winfield)
... We have numerous gymnastic exercises. Some parts of our apparatus are much like yours, as, for instance, a cross-bar, on which the boy swings, ...
— Another World - Fragments from the Star City of Montalluyah • Benjamin Lumley (AKA Hermes)
... politics, which attends on the soul, having a legislative part and a judicial part; and another art attending on the body, which has no generic name, but may also be described as having two divisions, one of which is medicine and the other gymnastic. Corresponding with these four arts or sciences there are four shams or simulations of them, mere experiences, as they may be termed, because they give no reason of their own existence. The art of dressing up is the sham or simulation of gymnastic, the art of cookery, of medicine; rhetoric is ...
— Gorgias • Plato
... your mind", take up some very simple, quiet hobby. Gardening, fretwork, photography and gymnastics are not necessarily quiet hobbies. Chess, billiards, and contortions with gymnastic apparatus are not to ...
— Epilepsy, Hysteria, and Neurasthenia • Isaac G. Briggs
... delicately susceptible thinker but the naked athlete, with firm flesh and swelling muscles. Most of their barbarian neighbours were ashamed to be seen undressed, but the Greeks seem to have felt little embarrassment in appearing naked in public. Their gymnastic habits entirely transformed their sense of shame. Their Olympic and other public games were a triumphant display of naked physical perfection. Young men of the noblest families and from the farthest Greek ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... Greeks' work was done not for themselves alone but for all races in all times; and Greek Art is the heirloom of the whole human race; and that work was to assert in drama, lyric, sculpture, music, gymnastic, the dignity of man—the dignity of man which they perceived for the most part with their intense aesthetic sense, through the beautiful in man. Man with them was divine, inasmuch as he could perceive beauty and be beautiful himself. Beauty might be physical, aesthetic, ...
— Lectures Delivered in America in 1874 • Charles Kingsley
... introduced the six-hours' working day and abolished private property, the cinema horrors will be replaced by classical concerts, the gin-shops by popular reading-rooms, the gaming-hells by edifying lectures, highway robberies by gymnastic exercises, detective novels by Gottfried Keller, bazaar-trifles and comic vulgarities by works of refined handicraft; and that out of boxing contests, racecourse betting, bomb exercises, and profiteering in butter, we shall see the rise of an era of ...
— The New Society • Walther Rathenau
... two loves; and the art of medicine shows which is the good and which is the bad love, and persuades the body to accept the good and reject the bad, and reconciles conflicting elements and makes them friends. Every art, gymnastic and husbandry as well as medicine, is the reconciliation of opposites; and this is what Heracleitus meant, when he spoke of a harmony of opposites: but in strictness he should rather have spoken of a harmony which succeeds opposites, for an agreement of disagreements ...
— Symposium • Plato
... the webs were of silk. I see now how much Benedict owes to Baruch. The Rabbinical gymnastic is no ill-training, though unmethodic. Maimonides de-anthropomorphises God, the Cabalah grapples, if confusedly, with the problem ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... the growing tendency to treat the human voice like any other instrument, merely to show its resources as an organ; of the final utter bondage of the poet to the musician, till opera became little more than a congeries of musico-gymnastic forms, wherein the vocal soloists could display their art, it needs not to speak at length, for some of these vices have not yet disappeared. In the language of Dante's guide through the Inferno, at one stage of their wanderings, when the sights were peculiarly ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... the bed to smooth the slightly wrinkled surface of the sheet. This gymnastic feat necessitated the averting of her face ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... but are brought round in order that one may help one's self. Just as one is struggling into conversation in defective German, a pike's head obtrudes itself over the left shoulder, and it is necessary to twist in one's seat and go through a gymnastic performance to ...
— The Gourmet's Guide to Europe • Algernon Bastard
... to a very small compass. You are teaching science: very good; I am dealing with the instrument by which science is acquired. All who have reflected upon the mode of life among the ancients attribute to gymnastic exercises that vigor of body and mind which so notably distinguishes them from us moderns. Montaigne's support of this opinion shows that he had fully adopted it; he returns to it again and again, in a thousand ways. Speaking of the education of a child, he says, "We must make ...
— Emile - or, Concerning Education; Extracts • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... given about as much time as in the average city, but without adequate facilities for outdoor and indoor plays and games. At present the work is too largely of the formal gymnastic type. Desirable improvements in the course are being advocated by the directors and supervisors of the work. They are recommending and introducing, where conditions will permit, the use of games, athletics, ...
— What the Schools Teach and Might Teach • John Franklin Bobbitt
... themselves, how much worse it must be all through the less prominent muscles! To guide the body in trapeze work, every well-trained acrobat knows he must have a quiet mind, a clear head, and obedient muscles. I recall a woman who stands high in gymnastic work, whose agility on the triple bars is excellent, but the nervous strain shown in the drawn lines of her face before she begins, leaves one who studies her carefully always in doubt as to whether she will not get confused before her difficult performance is ...
— Power Through Repose • Annie Payson Call
... were the same days in which Pompey dedicated the theatre wherein we take pride even at the present time. In it he provided an entertainment consisting of music and gymnastic contests, and in the hippodrome a horse-race and the slaughter of many beasts of all kinds. Five hundred lions were used up in five days, and eighteen elephants fought against men in heavy armor. Some of these beasts were killed immediately and ...
— Dio's Rome • Cassius Dio
... particularly fond of the old-fashioned equestrian entertainment. The Ring to which he has just made allusion is, it need hardly be added, The Circus, and The Book is a novel by Miss AMYE READE. Mr. P. is not sweet upon any gymnastic and acrobatic shows in which the chances of danger appear, and probably are, as ten to one against the performer; and especially does he object to children of very tender years being utilised in order to earn money for their parents or guardians by exhibiting ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, March 5, 1892 • Various
... surprised when we refused it for ours; and probably he could have given us good reason for his custom. His boys were strong, robust, handsome fellows; he had a charming pride in showing us the prizes they had taken at school; and on the lawn they were equally proud to show the gymnastic feats they had learned there. I believe we are coming to think now that the American schools are better than the Swiss; but till we have organized something like the Swiss school excursions, and have learned to mix more open air ...
— A Little Swiss Sojourn • W. D. Howells
... because the lottery ticket had been the direct means of his emigration, and, in fact, the first piece of good fortune that had befallen him since he left his native town. When he joined the circus he was an apprentice, and beside a certain number of hours of gymnastic practice daily and service in the ring both afternoon and evening, he had half a dozen horses to care for, his part of the tent to pack up and load, and the team to drive to the next stopping-place. For sixteen and often eighteen hours of hard work he received only his food and his ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 5 • Various
... they had placed on the drawing-room mantelpiece as a means of attracting any visitors' custom to Larkin. Still she need not have spoken in that angry tone, and called her "ill-bred." "Ill-bred" was a very uncomfortable word to have suddenly thrust upon one. Pauline leapt up at the gymnastic bar, and swung and wriggled there to shake ...
— In the Mist of the Mountains • Ethel Turner
... resided on shore ascended by a ladder to the gun-deck, which had been turned into a schoolroom; how six cadets occupied the space intended for each gun-carriage, where hammocks hung from hooks served them instead of beds; how the chapel was in a closet opened only on Sundays. He described the gymnastic feats in the rigging, the practice in gunnery, and many other things which, had they been well described, would have been interesting; but Fred was only a poor narrator. The conclusion the young ladies seemed to reach unanimously ...
— Jacqueline, Complete • (Mme. Blanc) Th. Bentzon
... Reff Ritter's story took some time, and he was asked several questions by Captain Putnam and Josiah Crabtree. He said that he had just been getting ready to take some gymnastic exercise when Jack and some of his chums had come in and begun to talk about his father, saying that they had ...
— The Mystery at Putnam Hall - The School Chums' Strange Discovery • Arthur M. Winfield
... it happens that I have thought more of exercise lately, and have taken walks late in the evening, besides playing my old gymnastic tricks every day." ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... merry-making of the May-pole, the friendly jousts of neighbors on the common play-ground of the neighborhood, with the dances under the walnut-trees of sunny Provence. The game is an invigorating one, and even those who do not know it are pleased with its animation. We have hitherto neglected that gymnastic culture which made the Greeks the graceful people they were, and which contributed to the cultivation ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... Armenians were tortured and massacred, were the two wings on which it was to soar. Auxiliary soaring societies were organised, among them a Turkish Ojagha with similar aims, and no fewer than sixteen branches of it were founded throughout the Empire. There were also a Turkish Guiji or gymnastic club, and an Izji or boy scouts' club. A union of merchants worked for the same object in districts where hitherto trade had been in the hands of Greeks and Armenians, and signs appeared on their shops that only Turkish labour was employed. Religious funds also ...
— Crescent and Iron Cross • E. F. Benson
... of our trio were performing gymnastic feats during these awfully silent minutes of waiting, is to say little. All the repressed motion of their bodies seemed concentrated in these organs, which raced, leaped, stopped short, and pounded, ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook
... the suffrage movement, of which they were prominent representatives. Hence a stronger love for woman's political freedom, than for their own personal comfort, compelled them to lay it aside. The experiment, however, was not without its good results. The dress was adopted for skating and gymnastic exercises, in seminaries and sanitariums. At Dr. James C. Jackson's, in Dansville, N. Y., it is still worn. Many farmers' wives, too, are enjoying its freedom in their ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... require yours," replied the vine; "you have become a second nature to me. Let others indulge in the delights of gymnastic worship; you and I will ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... muttered blasphemies under his breath, and put pink cotton-wool in the toes of his master's dancing-shoes. Castrillon then kicked him into the adjoining room and resumed his gymnastic exercises. At the end of half an hour, the man re-entered carrying a note fastidiously between ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... controllable, and bearing hard against the curb in a wild desire to rush off. In fact, I fully expected at any moment to be shaken from my grasp, as, oddly enough, even in that time of peril, I recalled the gymnastic sport of giant strides of my schooldays, and held on; but I was certain we were now too late, and that it was only a matter of moments before we should be overtaken and cut down or taken prisoners by a strong party of the Boers who ...
— Charge! - A Story of Briton and Boer • George Manville Fenn
... grinned Split, whose nickname honored a gymnastic feat which no other Madigan, however athletic, could accomplish half so successfully ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... required in several religious functions.... Large and colossal edifices were quite furnished with all the necessary for care and sport. Besides localities for all kind of bath—cold, warm, steam bath—didn't want parks, alleys, and porticos in order to walk; lists rings for gymnastic exercises, conversation and reading rooms, localities for theatrical representations, swimming stations, localities for scientific disquisitions, moral and religious teachings. The most splendid art works adorned ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... Gymnastic exercises were not thought of; and, except cricket, they had no manly games to strengthen their muscles and improve their forms. There was a dancing-master; but as he had the art of making a toil of a pleasure, few of the boys learned. A drill-sergeant came once a week, ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... factor in our training, one of the finest gymnasiums in the world, was near completion and would be ready to receive squads for instruction in a short time. Eventually we were ordered to prepare squads for gymnastic work, and those who had the privilege of attending it liked it very much. I was very fond of fencing, single stick and sword drill. This gymnasium was built and equipped, and the exercises, systematized and progressive, were the same as those at ...
— A Soldier's Life - Being the Personal Reminiscences of Edwin G. Rundle • Edwin G. Rundle
... gymnastic performance peculiar to old Russia, and therefore needs to be described. It could become popular only among a people of strong physical qualities, and in a country where swift rivers freeze rapidly from sudden cold. Hence we are of the opinion ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor
... heart, Sped, when I passed his sylvan fort, To do the honors of his court, As fits a feathered lord of land, Flew near, with soft wing grazed my hand, Hopped on the bough, then, darting low, Prints his small impress on the snow, Shows feats of his gymnastic play, Head downward, clinging to the spray. Here was this atom in full breath Hurling defiance at vast death, This scrap of valor just for play Fronts the north-wind in waistcoat gray, As if to shame my weak behavior. I greeted loud my little saviour: "Thou pet! what dost here? and what for? In these ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... before dawn and, clad in loin-cloths, begin with a bout or two with a blind wrestler. Without a pause we donned our tunics on our dusty bodies, and started on our courses of literature, mathematics, geography and history. On our return from school our drawing and gymnastic masters would be ready for us. In the evening Aghore Babu came for our English lessons. It was only after ...
— My Reminiscences • Rabindranath Tagore
... characters. In the first draft there was not sufficient movement. To the left there was a stout sailor in a striped jacket who was thrusting a pole into the chest of a thin man in check trousers. This, as drawn, seemed too tranquil, and he substituted a stouter, more jovial figure with gymnastic action—the second was made more contrasted. Next him was a confused group—a man with a paper cap, in place of which he supplied a stout man on whom the other was driven back, and who was being pushed from behind. The animation of the background is ...
— Pickwickian Manners and Customs • Percy Fitzgerald
... they reached the green, than they challenged the heroes of the day to new trials of strength and activity. Several gymnastic contests ensued, for the honour of the respective villages. In the course of these exercises, young Tibbets and the champion of the adverse party had an obstinate match at wrestling. They tugged, and strained, and panted, without ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... everybody had to shout at him to make him hear. But this time Plunger was wise and kept out of sight, as did also Pud Hicks, his assistant, and Bob Nixon, the chauffeur. The only person the boys could get hold of was Si Crews, the gymnastic instructor. ...
— The Rover Boys at Big Horn Ranch - The Cowboys' Double Round-Up • Edward Stratemeyer
... shall put an end to all your civil wars." It is said that Cicero formed from his dream a distinct image of the youth, and retained it afterwards perfectly, but did not know who it was. The next day, going down into the Campus Martius, he met the boys returning from their gymnastic exercises, and the first was he, just as he had appeared to him in his dream. Being astonished at it, he asked him who were his parents. And it proved to be this young Caesar, whose father was a man of no great eminence, Octavius, and his mother, Attia, Caesar's sister's ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... the Promotion and Preservation of Health, with Illustrated Prescriptions of Swedish Gymnastic Exercises for Home and Club Practice. ...
— No Animal Food - and Nutrition and Diet with Vegetable Recipes • Rupert H. Wheldon
... recognise as one of the Seven Wonders (with capitals) of Dauphine. Then came a valley, almost theatrical in its romantic grace. One would not have believed in it for a moment if one had seen it first in a sketch. Even the railway, on which we soon looked down, was inspired to gymnastic feats, leaping across chasms on giddy viaducts, and twisting back upon itself in corkscrew tunnels. There were thrilling retrospective views away to the giant Alps we were leaving behind, but soon, nearer mountains crowded them out of sight. The country ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... Major. 'Retired Captain, aged fifty, who'll take on all comers of forty-two and over, at a steeplechase, round of golf, billiard match, hopping match, gymnastic competition, swinging Indian clubs——' No objection, gentlemen? Then carried ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... ginger. The enormous hand of Innocent Smith appearing through the aperture, like a giant's in a fairy tale, received these tributes and bore them off to the eyrie; then they both hoisted themselves out of the window. They were both athletic, and even gymnastic; Inglewood through his concern for hygiene, and Moon through his concern for sport, which was not quite so idle and inactive as that of the average sportsman. Also they both had a light-headed burst of celestial sensation ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... moral of this noble picture, and in it I felt that I had seen an example of that true mission of art which will manifest itself more and more in this world as Christ's kingdom comes; art which is not a mere juggler of colors, a gymnastic display of effects, but a solemn, inspiring poetry, teaching us to live and die for that which it noblest and truest. I think this picture much superior to its companion, the Martyrdom of Huss, which I had already seen ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe |
