United States or Vietnam ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
She, however, recently has had to give way to a brunette, belonging to a troupe of mountebanks, which for some time has favored us with performances of feats of strength and rope-dancing. You have seen this kind of women with sharp, yellow, prematurely-aged faces, creatures that are shattered by brutality, poverty, and miserable vices, and who always over-dress in shabby velvet and dirty red.
What the malicious Puck denoted we shall soon see Oh, woe! woe! Next day all sorts of amusements were set on foot, to chase away gloomy thoughts out of the hearts of the illustrious guests such as tilting with lances, dancing upon stilts, wrestling, rope-dancing. Item, pickleherring and harlequins.
For awhile, getting into loose company, I went about the country to wakes and Fairs, picking up a livelihood by Rope-dancing, back and broadsword fighting, and now and then sword swallowing and fire eating; but since my misadventure with the Posture Master I had taken a dislike to the Mountebank life, and could not settle down to it again.
If Literature dwindle, as is probable, into mere merry-andrewism, windy twaddle, and feats of spiritual legerdemain, analogous to rope-dancing, opera-dancing, and street-fiddling with a hat carried round for halfpence, or for guineas, there will be no hope in Literature. What if our next set of Souls'-Overseers were to be silent ones very mainly?
We walked about, and met with a disappointment at every turn; our favourite views were mere patches of paint; the fountain that had sparkled so showily by lamp-light, presented very much the appearance of a water-pipe that had burst; all the ornaments were dingy, and all the walks gloomy. There was a spectral attempt at rope-dancing in the little open theatre.
Anthony. All absurd efforts of agility which you ever saw at a seance of the Hylobates Lar Club at Cambridge are quiet and clumsy compared to the rope-dancing which goes on in the boughs of the Poui tree, or, to their great detriment, of the Bougainvillea and the Gardenia on the lawn. But with all this, Spider is the gentlest, most obedient, and most domestic of beasts.
And what can you expect from an idiot, who is engoué of a common rope-dancing girl, that capered on a pack-thread at Ghent in Flanders, unless they were to club their talents to set up a booth at Bartholomew Fair?
The Arnea, in the Piazza di Arni, built by the French, is dedicated to the populace for their open-air amusements, such as balloon ascents, rope-dancing, fire-works, races, shows, etc.: it contains seats for some 30,000 spectators. The Arc de Triomphe is considered the best of the kind in Europe.
Therefore, the plays, properly so called, alternated with fights between animals, in which bears and bulls were baited by great blood-thirsty bulldogs, or with fencing-matches fought by celebrated English and foreign fencing-masters, with rope-dancing, acrobatic tricks, and boxing.
I would rather have given it to the travelling musicians. They, like us humanists, are allied to the Muses and, moreover, are harmless, happy folk." Lienhard Groland listened till his older friend had finished. Then, after thanking him for his well-meant counsel, he answered, turning to the others also: "In better days rope-dancing was the profession of yonder poor, coughing creature.
Word Of The Day