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More "Plaything" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... inhabit them? A transient semblance, a delusion of the senses! And yet, I am conscious that I miss just those houses which happen to stand, in Berlin and that I feel an unspeakable longing for the phantom called Dr. Schrotter. Once again it has been proved to me that I am an unconscious plaything in the hands of unknown powers, for again, as more than once in my life, and always at decisive moments, some outside agency has interfered in my fate, and disposed of me contrary to my own intentions, by sending me out of Berlin and away from you. But, nevertheless, my appreciation ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... gale that it had plucked the hapless steamer out of the jaws of the sucking sand, and flung her, like a plaything, into the breakers beyond. The Miami slowed down, her first pause in that awful race, which was ending in the maze of the Diamond Shoals, with waves breaking on every side and ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Life-Savers • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... dawn, do some remnants of affection yet remain mine, and is her memorial kiss warm upon my cold picture? has she tears for bedfellows, and does she clasp to her bosom and kiss a deluding dream of me? or has she some other new love, a new plaything? Never, O lamp, look thou on that, but be guardian of her whom ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... would indulge him too, and would reply 'What? why, Charoba!' raised with sweet surprise, And proud to shine a teacher in her turn. Show her the graven sceptre; what its use? 'Twas to beat dogs with, and to gather flies. She thought the crown a plaything to amuse Herself, and not the people, for she thought Who mimic infant words might infant toys: But while she watched grave elders look with awe On such a bauble, she withheld her breath; She was afraid her parents should suspect They had caught childhood ...
— Gebir • Walter Savage Landor
... her hands, and not thinking what I was about, gathered them up into a ball. Suddenly she saw what I had done, and instead of scolding me for spoiling her pretty chains, which I richly deserved, was delighted to find I had twisted them into a new plaything. She ran off with the ball, tossing it about till, excited with her own joy, she got to the brow of the hill, and ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... news that my sister would be pledged to spend her life as the companion, or, more properly speaking, the plaything, of a man who had so little delicacy of mind, so little self-respect, as to have allowed his feelings (for that he was attached to Fanny, as far as he was capable of forming a real attachment, I could not for ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... fancies which hitherto I had only smiled at. But now, somehow—perhaps because there might have been some excuse for this one—perhaps because what a man rescues he will not willingly leave to another—even such a poor young thing as this plaything of the camp—for either of these reasons, or for none at all, this ogling of ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... series of rebuffs slowly forced the truth in upon Sanders's mind that the business world refused to accept the telephone as an article of commerce. It was a toy, a plaything, a scientific wonder, but not a necessity to be bought and used for ordinary purposes by ordinary people. Capitalists treated it exactly as they treated the Atlantic Cable project when Cyrus Field visited Boston in 1862. They admired and marvelled; ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... his father's residence. He arrived at an awkward time. Mr. Blake, the elder, was up to his eyes in the business of the House of Commons, and was amusing himself at home that night with the favourite parliamentary plaything which they call "a private bill." Mr. Jeffco himself showed Mr. Franklin into his father's study. "My dear Franklin! why do you surprise me in this way? Anything wrong?" "Yes; something wrong with Rachel; I am dreadfully distressed about ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... ruled conversation and talked excellently on Greek and Latin literature; and, when poetry laid siege to a maiden's heart, the beleaguered fortress not seldom surrendered likewise in graceful verses. Rhythms became more and more the fashionable plaything of the big children of both sexes; poetical epistles, joint poetical exercises and competitions among good friends, were of common occurrence, and towards the end of this epoch institutions were already opened in the capital, ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... complacently resigned his bewitching young wife to be the plaything of Don Francesco de' Medici, he also yielded up the guardianship of his little daughter, Pellegrina, and she lived with her mother in the private mansion Bianca had received from the Prince near the ...
— The Tragedies of the Medici • Edgcumbe Staley
... the King's child went out into the forest and sat down by the side of the cool fountain, and when she was dull she took a golden ball and threw it up high and caught it, and this ball was her favorite plaything. ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... for it hereafter. But that is no matter. They snatch a joy beyond the reach of fate, and consider the present time sacred, inviolable, unaccountable to that hard, churlish, niggard, inexorable taskmaster, the future. Now or never is their motto. They are madly devoted to the plaything, the ruling passion of the moment. What is to happen to them a week hence is as if it were to happen to them a thousand years hence. They put off the consideration for another day, and their heedless unconcern laughs at it as a fable. Their life is 'a cell of ignorance, travelling ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... wild Best befit a thoughtless child, A solid wall, an earthen floor, Prison lights, a padlock'd door, Where's no plaything which he may Turn to harm by random play, For in such sport too oft is found A penny-toy will cost a pound. Be wise and merry;—play, but think; For ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... the first locomotive was built; the men who put out the first sewing machine had their stores broken into and the machines smashed; and the telephone when first installed was considered simply as a plaything and curiosity, and not as a useful improvement. It has been the history of every age and of most of the great inventions. After the inventions were completed, and their value shown, the merchant and the manufacturer created the demand, and then the articles became ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Tribesmen • Roger Finlay
... enwrapping her shoulders, but it was scarcely likely, considering Miss Aldclyffe's temperament, that she had all her life been used to a maid, Cytherea's youth, and the elder lady's marked treatment of her as if she were a mere child or plaything. The matter was too slight to reason about, and yet upon the whole it seemed that Miss Aldclyffe must have a practical ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... it was more "poor old Bob" or "poor old Ruth." Ruth was so arduous at first, so in earnest—like a child with a new and engrossing plaything for a day or two, and then, I suppose, she showed her new toy to Bob, and he took it away from her. Anyway, she put it by. It seemed rather a shame to me. The new would have worn off after ...
— The Fifth Wheel - A Novel • Olive Higgins Prouty
... Never had there met two persons so exquisitely fitted to plague each other. Each of them had exactly the fault of which the other was most impatient; and they were, in different ways, the most impatient of mankind. Frederic was frugal, almost niggardly. When he had secured his plaything, he began to think that he had bought it too dear. Voltaire, on the other hand, was greedy, even to the extent of impudence and knavery; and conceived that the favorite of a monarch who had barrels full of gold and silver ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... ungodly skill in it, the subtle partnership with a mindless public that seduces to mental speculation; the reassuring caress as reward for intellectual penetration; that inborn cleverness that makes the reader see, applaud, or pity him or herself in the sympathetic role of a plaything of Chance ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... have it." the young woman asked, "would you like a pencil of your very own, to draw with?" Would he! The child's whole face beamed. Dimes were as nothing compared to shiney new pencils. The third grandchild was overjoyed with his new plaything. Ella Sanderson was delighted with her great grandchild's pleasure. The interviewer received a ...
— Slave Narratives: Arkansas Narratives - Arkansas Narratives, Part 6 • Works Projects Administration
... Pah, I have no objection; but you will allow me, instead of using a knife, to make use of this weapon!" and thereupon he drew from his pocket a small, brightly polished poniard about three or four inches long, which looked more like a lady's plaything than ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume I (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... became more than serious. "A daughter of ours has demanded for a plaything a caged bird. Psychologically it is an important occasion. Now or never must she learn to look upon a caged bird with horror. What I am thinking of is the psychological effect upon the child's ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, August 4th, 1920 • Various
... From his childhood he had borne a secret sorrow in his heart—the sorrow of seeing his young brother Carl preferred to himself. Not only was Carl the darling of his parents, but he was the pet and plaything of the whole palace. True, the poor little archduke was not gifted with the grace and charming naivete of his brother. He was awkward, serious, and his countenance wore an expression of discontent, which was thought to betray an evil disposition, but which, in reality, was but the reflection ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... a long, single barrel, rifle-bored duelling pistol—of the type used by gentlemen at the beginning of the century. Where he had got it she did not know, but always it had been his plaything. ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... another man before! And this is what the people say! And all the time I thought myself exceptional, I was only being made a fool, and one of a large number, and a laughing-stock for the whole city, and branded, as it were, with ridicule and ignominy as a plaything of the Queen, and going about unconsciously with her label round my neck: Nectar when she turns towards thee: poison ...
— The Substance of a Dream • F. W. Bain
... minded to throw you both to the beasts. No, no, not that; you dare not front me! I make my own choice of who shall die and who live." She laughed mockingly. "Bah! I know your sort, Monsieur—'tis as the wind blows; you love to-day, and forget to-morrow. Yet I keep you for a plaything—I have no use for her. I care no longer how the wolves tear her dainty limbs. Before this I have tasted ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... cord upon which the dozens of great brass rings were strung, watching the shining ellipse they made as they revolved,—like a child set down upon the carpet with a plaything,—expecting no answer, only waiting for the next vagrant whimsicality that should come across her brain,—not altogether without method, either,—to give ...
— A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life. • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... in Wagner? Who shall say? If it was, it was a fault which he shared with every earnest reformer who is not content with preaching, but enforces his precepts with action. Reform is no plaything; it cannot be achieved by listening to the well-meant advice of friends who know no higher goal than personal success, who have no glimmering of the motives that impel a great soul, who would fain tell the thunderbolt where it shall strike. ...
— Wagner's Tristan und Isolde • George Ainslie Hight
... rest of the morning among the wicked-looking sharks of the Navy, and he went back depressed with the thought that his "sneak-box" was merely a plaything. However, he picked up confidence when the next day brought an offer from the builders to turn out an aluminium sneak-box in three divisions, with capacity for a crew of six, to be worked on occasion by two men pulling at levers, driving the ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... thinks her child is not reasonable enough to do, of her own accord, something which it is nevertheless important she should do, as learning to read, for instance, or to work with her needle, &c., she comes to the rescue with rewards, and gives her a plaything when she has done well. And thus GOD, who had not confidence enough in man's reason to trust to it alone for supplying the wants of human nature, has placed a plaything in the shape of pleasure after every necessity; and in supplying the want, ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... this must have pleased him, as he did not protest against such liberties. He spoke very little to them, and when he did so he did it cautiously as if afraid that his words would hurt or contaminate them. He passed many hours thus as their companion and plaything, watching their lively faces with his ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky
... the wanton apparel, the refined commodity of rooms and furniture. In such a place and in such company, it is enough to be together to feel at ease. Their idleness does not weigh upon them; life is their plaything."[29] ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... happened but a drunken Mexican drew a dagger somewhere in the mix up and let it fly indiscriminate like. We all scattered like mischief when we saw the thing flash. Nobody cares much for that kind of plaything at close range. But Massey didn't move. It got him, clean in the heart. He couldn't have suffered a second. It was all over in a breath. He fell and the mob made itself scarce. Another fellow and I were the first to get to him but there wasn't anything to do but look in his pockets ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... son—my own son, born of my body, and in glad anguish, Rosamund—knows me for what I am. For I have heard—Coward! O beautiful sleek coward!" the Queen said; "I would have died without lamentation and I was but your plaything!" ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... triumph, unutterable rogue? Hast thou cheated him thus, and unjustly overcome the innocent child? Come, be ready to perform for me the task I will tell thee of, and I will give thee Zeus' all-beauteous plaything—the one which his dear nurse Adrasteia made for him, while he still lived a child, with childish ways, in the Idaean cave—a well-rounded ball; no better toy wilt thou get from the hands of Hephaestus. All of gold ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius
... prison cell before he could be tried. Lount, another of the leaders, had succeeded in reaching Long Point, Lake Erie. With a fellow patriot, a French voyageur, and a boy, he started to cross Lake Erie in an open boat. It was wintry, stormy weather. For two days and two nights the boat tossed, a plaything of the waves, the drenching spray freezing as it fell, till the craft was almost ice-logged. For food they had brought only a small piece of meat, and this had frozen so hard that their numbed hands could not break it. Weakening at each oar stroke, they at last saw the south shore of Lake Erie ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... with the result of the evening, and fancies that he is beginning to find the child something of a bore. It was a pretty plaything at first, but it can be naughty and troublesome. Ah, Madame Lepelletier, fascinating as you are, if you could see how his thoughts have been wandering, and witness the passion with which he kisses his sleeping child ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... itself—the satisfaction of an irresistible desire, the paradise of bliss which merely loving has become for him. What love means he hardly knows. He only knows that he must love. And women love him—half as a plaything to be trifled with, half as a young god to be wounded by. This rising of the star of love as it ascends into the heaven of youthful fancy, is revealed in the melodies Mozart has written for him. How shall we describe their potency? Who shall translate those curiously perfect words to which ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... the pen and brought something back. She held it up and said shyly, "This is Daddy's hat. It used to be the kittens' bed. Now it is their plaything." ...
— Five Little Friends • Sherred Willcox Adams
... something fell at my feet. It was the tiny locket my child had worn on its little neck from the day the mother had fastened it there. What secret had Margaret meant? The locket was the answer! I had been a plaything of some unknown, malicious fiend again. The rescued baby was not the Judge's baby. That was the secret! The child I heard crying there ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... Martian tongue, while I stood looking backward every few steps, delighted to trace the broad river of the canal winding through the desolation for miles beyond. Then I noticed how rapid and effortless is motion in Mars. Volition is so easy and penetrating, the body becomes a mere plaything for the mind. Every function, every part is swayed into vitality by the mind. There is the apparent motion of the limbs, but really the whole frame sweeps on as by an intangible process of translation, and the body is transferred to the point the ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... level, even if it could not run uphill. Mrs. Abbott had lived for twenty years in San Francisco, and in New Orleans for thirty years before that, and she had seen a good many women in love in her time. This climate made a plaything of virtue. "Virtue—you said?—Precisely. She's not there or we'd see the signs of moral struggle, horror, in fact; for she's not one to succumb easily. But mark my ...
— Sleeping Fires • Gertrude Atherton
... piled up, a hideous mound, in the corners of the court. The priests, without delay, met with the same fate. A moment sufficed for trial, and verdict, and execution. Night came. Brandy and excitement had roused the demon in the human heart. Life was a plaything, murder a pastime. Torches were lighted, refreshments introduced, songs of mirth and joviality rose upon the night air, and still the horrid carnage continued unabated. Now and then, from caprice, one was liberated; but the innocent ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... thee," said he. "Thou would'st not have an honorable Prince! Thou could'st not prize the rose and the nightingale, but thou wast ready to kiss the swineherd for the sake of a trumpery plaything. Thou ...
— Andersen's Fairy Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... recollections respecting the fervent and unequivocal passion of Lady Sara. Though guilty, it sprung from a headlong ardor of disposition which formed at once the error and its palliation. He saw that love was not welcomed by her (at least he thought so) as a plaything, but struggled against as with a foe. He had witnessed her tortures; he pitied them, and to render her happy, would gladly have made any sacrifice short of his conscience. Too well assured of being all the world to Lady Sara, the belief that Miss Euphemia ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... would be so very hard to let slip an opportunity of taking just one peep! I know not whether Pandora expected any toys; for none had yet begun to be made, probably, in those days, when the world itself was one great plaything for the children that dwelt upon it. But Pandora was convinced that there was something very beautiful and valuable in the box; and therefore she felt just as anxious to take a peep as any of these little girls, here around me, would have felt. And, possibly, ...
— The Paradise of Children - (From: "A Wonder-Book For Girls and Boys") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... and into the eye that is even now equally beholding the objects on the unknown, thither side of thee, thou sun! Then gazing at his quadrant, and handling, one after the other, its numerous cabalistical contrivances, he pondered again, and muttered: Foolish toy! babies' plaything of haughty Admirals, and Commodores, and Captains; the world brags of thee, of thy cunning and might; but what after all canst thou do, but tell the poor, pitiful point, where thou thyself happenest ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... card and a letter found in a book. But was not that sufficient to affirm that I had not been the plaything of a dream? ...
— The Extraordinary Adventures of Arsene Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar • Maurice Leblanc
... lovely in the char-racter, and so clever, and so beautiful, my dear white r-rose. It means, besides those things, that you have saved me from the sin of letting my poor powers grow weaker; that you have changed me from a plaything of chance into a man of will and action. I am bor-rn again, my heart's joy, into a world of force and possibility, and you are the queen ...
— A Tar-Heel Baron • Mabell Shippie Clarke Pelton
... though you see me so happy, and so satisfied with life, every now and then the remembrance of that unhappy girl strikes me here, in my head, and I eat badly and sleep worse, thinking that a girl who, after all, is of our own blood, is wandering lost over the world, a plaything for men, without anyone sheltering her, as though she were all alone, as though ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... marvel at the subjection into which this proud and self-dependent woman had willfully flung herself, hanging her life upon the chance of an angry or favorable regard from a person who, a little while before, had seemed the plaything of a moment. But, in Miriam's eyes, Donatello was always, thenceforth, invested with the tragic dignity of their hour of crime; and, furthermore, the keen and deep insight, with which her love endowed her, enabled her to know him far better than he could be known by ordinary observation. ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... you, at seasonable hours and unseasonable; when I have found him riding miles and miles across the country at midnight, and risking his life, and getting covered with mud, to get a glimpse of you, I have called him a foolish man—the plaything of a finished coquette. I thought that what was getting to be a tragedy to me was a comedy to you. But now I see that tragedy lies on YOUR side of the situation no less than on MINE, and more; that if I have felt trouble at my position, you have felt anguish at yours; that if I have had disappointments, ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... extraordinary strength with one of the feeblest souls. The many sublime thoughts, the ingenious and often profound combinations which for many years have characterized your pen, were apparently intended only for others; you yourself derive no benefit from them. You are, and will ever be, the plaything of every accidental and momentary impression. Always ready to acknowledge and embrace whatever came near you, you were never able to feel either enduring hatred or attachment. Your life is a mere capitulation. If the Evil One himself should appear on earth in visible ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... this plaything for a woman in the old country, many a long year ago," said Mat, pressing the fan roughly into Mr. Blyth's hands. "When I come back, and thought for to give it her, she was dead and gone. There's not another woman in England as cares about me, or knows about me. If you're too proud to let your ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... Paris. I must have lost my head during the last few days! I must be the plaything of my enervated imagination, unless I am really a somnambulist, or I have been brought under the power of one of those influences—hypnotic suggestion, for example—which are known to exist, but have hitherto been inexplicable. ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... in my peaceful grave With my poor parents, and at rest as they are? Instead of that, I'm wand'ring into cares.—— Castalio! O Castalio! hast thou caught My foolish heart; and, like a tender child, That trusts his plaything to another hand, I fear its harm, and fain would have it back. Come near, Cordelio; I must chide ...
— The Orphan - or, The Unhappy Marriage • Thomas Otway
... by some of his more intimate friends; he arranged grotesque dances, to be performed at stated periods of the evening by professional buffoons, hired from Florence. He composed a toy symphony, which included solos on every noisy plaything at that time manufactured for children's use. And not content with thus avoiding the beaten track in preparing the entertainments at the ball, he determined also to show decided originality, even in selecting the attendants who were ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... him to England. Ample funds were provided for his maintenance, but the journey to England was again and again put off; and at last there were signs that Lord Stanhope was not quite satisfied with his new plaything. So much had been said about Kaspar's cleverness, that his new teachers were disappointed to find that his acquirements were about those of a boy of eight. They accused him of laziness and of deceit; and he, finding himself suspected and closely questioned as to everything he did, ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... mistaken for his daughter. She looks so young—not sixteen even; but with those childish blue eyes, and that innocent, pleading kind of expression, she never can be old. She is very beautiful, and I can understand in part Guy's infatuation, though at times he hardly knows what to do with his pretty plaything. ...
— Miss McDonald • Mary J. Holmes
... renounce all claim to the throne; but being selfish, like the rest, I refuse to renounce all claim to the woman the Archbishops themselves chose as my wife, neither shall I allow the case to be made further the plaything of circumstance. Your kinswoman, no later ago than this afternoon, confessed her love for me and her complete disregard of any position I may hold in this realm. Now, Father Ambrose, I ask you several questions. Is it in consonance with the rules of the ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr
... were more than there is, it would, in the next place, be moral insanity to put our trust in it. "Nothing walks with aimless feet." Our life is no lottery. We may make foolish experiments with it, but we do so at our own risk. It is no plaything of chance, it is a stern responsibility which is determined by law that brooks no interference and excuses no indifference. The proverb tells us that "our lot is cast into the lap, but the whole ...
— Men in the Making • Ambrose Shepherd
... had one pretty plaything to amuse them, for in the middle of the great ocean a Pilgrim baby was born, and they called him "Oceanus," for his birthplace. When the children grew so tired that they were cross and fretful, Oceanus' mother let ...
— The Story Hour • Nora A. Smith and Kate Douglas Wiggin
... eyes; the flexile and almost effeminate contour of the harmonious features; altogether made such an ideal of childlike beauty as Lawrence had loved to paint or Chantrey model. And the daintiest cares of a mother, who, as yet, has her darling all to herself—her toy, her plaything—were visible in the large falling collar of finest cambric, and the blue velvet dress with its filigree buttons and ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... did my very best, what he called level best, and when she was done I was as proud of her as—as—well, as your young son here might have been of a new plaything." ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn
... undid his trousers with her fairy fingers, all trembling with excitement, and drew out his stiff affair, which already gave promise of a very respectable future, now swollen to a size it had never before known. Delighted at the sight of so bewitching a plaything, she made him lie down as she had done, and kneeling beside him, with cheeks glowing with excitement, she closely examined every part of the rampant little member. Strange to say, no hand, hardly even its owner's, had as yet invaded its virgin ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous
... was being tossed about, the plaything of inconceivable forces. They lived only because the forces did not try to turn the ship more violently, not because of the strength of the ship, for nothing could resist the awful power ...
— Islands of Space • John W Campbell
... assassination the next. He imagines that his infant grandchild is to become his rival, and he deliberately orders him to be left in a gloomy forest alone, to die of cold and hunger. When the imaginary danger has passed away, he seeks amusement in making the same grandchild his plaything, and overwhelms him with favors bestowed solely for the gratification of the giver, under the influence of an affection almost as purely animal as that of a ...
— Cyrus the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... George's conversation, that he was from Kentucky, seemed evidently disposed to cultivate his acquaintance; in which design she was seconded by the graces of her little girl, who was about as pretty a plaything as ever diverted the weariness of a fortnight's trip ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... very moment he is inspired with a very particular wish for that above all things. So with a nation. We want our independence. We want to do as we like. Otherwise, why ask for a Parliament? Gladstone says, Yes, my pretty dear, it shall have its ickety-pickety Parliament; it shall have its plaything. And it shall ridy-pidy in the coachy-poachy too; all round the parky-warky with the cock-a-doodle-doo. But it mustn't touch! Or if it touches it mustn't be rough, for its plaything will break so easily. We don't want this tomfoolery, nor to be treated like children. ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... continued Henrietta Plunkett, rising to the foothills of her platform manner, "to become a parasite, a man's bond slave, his creature? Do you wish to be his toy, his plaything?" ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... halted, where the path broadened on a market-place, part shade, part luminous with golden dust. A squad of lank boys, kicking miraculously with flat upturned soles, kept a wicker ball shining in the air, as true and lively as a plaything on a fountain-jet. Beyond, their tiny juniors, girls and boys knee-high, and fat tumbling babies in rainbow finery, all hand-locked and singing, turned their circle inside out and back again, in the dizzy graces of the "Water Wheel." Other ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... is the fact that, in this neighborhood, an eagle should be chained for a plaything. When a child, I used often to stand at a window from which I could see an eagle chained in the balcony of a museum. The people used to poke at it with sticks, and my childish heart would swell with indignation ...
— Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 • S.M. Fuller
... plaything. That's all he cares about. I've been with him and his family almost from a baby, and have grown old a-serving him, and it don't matter to him whether I goes into the hedges and ditches, or where I goes. They say that service is no heritance, ...
— An Old Man's Love • Anthony Trollope
... answered the frog, "I daresay I can give you some good advice; but what will you give me if I bring back your plaything to you?" ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)
... easily asserted his ascendency. Pompey allowed himself to be guided, and the arrangement was probably dictated by Caesar's own prudence. He did not mean to leave Gaul half conquered, to see his work undone, and himself made into a plaything by men who had incited Ariovistus to destroy him. The senators who were present at Lucca implied by their co-operation that they too were weary of anarchy, and would sustain the army in a remodelling of the State ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... degree the little maiden kept her word. She was the favourite plaything of the boys, and got on well with Babie, who was too bright and yielding ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... shelf of this window, after their weary march from Liliput. But what cares Annie for soldiers? No conquering queen is she, neither a Semiramis nor a Catharine, her whole heart is set upon that doll, who gazes at us with such a fashionable stare. This is the little girl's true plaything. Though made of wood, a doll is a visionary and ethereal personage, endowed by childish fancy with a peculiar life; the mimic lady is a heroine of romance, an actor and a sufferer in a thousand shadowy scenes, the chief inhabitant of that wild world with which children ape the real one. Little ...
— Little Annie's Ramble (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... and decided to set the traps where the skull was hidden, for the spot was ideal for the purpose. On two sides logs formed a barrier and beyond them was a huge bowlder, the two forming a natural little cove. He expected the bear to approach his plaything from the ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills
... in order to do something to help mother," added Dory. "I didn't give forty-two dollars for it for a plaything." ...
— All Adrift - or The Goldwing Club • Oliver Optic
... admiring looks and soft speeches; but if Gussie had a chance to secure another escort more to her mind, she thought nothing of snubbing Hugh unmercifully, yet was willing enough to smile him back to her side when no other gentleman offered his company. But few men care to be made the plaything of a young girl's caprice, and there came a time when Gussie's smile lost its power to charm. Her pretty face had been the attraction; but having ample opportunity of seeing Gussie under the different light of home-life, he could not ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth
... of their happy little talk together Annie Forest, in her usual careless fashion, entered the play-room. She alone, of all the girls, had taken no notice of the new plaything. She walked to her usual corner, sat down on the floor, and began to play cup and ball for the benefit of two or three of the smallest children. Hester did not regard her in the least; she sat with Nan on her knee, stroking ...
— A World of Girls - The Story of a School • L. T. Meade
... make a plaything of a treasure. Woe betide him if he does! Let him take that well to heart,' ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... having listened to the discourse of Probus to the end, was the practical aim and character of the religion he preached. It was no fanciful speculation nor airy dream. It was not a plaything of the imagination he had been holding up to our contemplation, but a series of truths and doctrines bearing with eminent directness, and with a perfect adaptation, upon human life, the effect and issue of which, widely and cordially received, ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... it is no mask," he said icily; "I swore to you . . . once, that my life was yours. For months now it has been your plaything . . . ...
— The Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... And for her father, — and the black bull Tor, Hers and her pride. Yea, twice she turned away Before the awful darkness of the door, And the great horror of the Wall of Man Where Man is made the plaything of Taman, An Eyeless Face that waits ...
— Verses 1889-1896 • Rudyard Kipling
... know the truth well enough. I have been over and over it again and again in the night. He never loved me. He never could love any one but her. He knew her long ago, and has loved her all his life. Why should he put me in her place? He admired me. I was a beautiful plaything—no, ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... same selfish and worldly excuses have force with us: 'We have business to look after; men must live; we have no time to think about religion; I have built a new mill that occupies my thoughts; I have found a new plaything, and I must try it; I have married a wife, and therefore I cannot come.' So God and His claims, Christ and His love, are hustled into a corner to be attended to when opportunity serves, but to be neglected in the meantime. And the same result follows, not by miracle, but by natural necessity. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... A plaything for the young ones he has found— A dormouse nest; the living ball coil'd round For its long winter sleep; all his thought As he trudged stoutly homeward, was of naught But the glad wonderment in Jenny's eyes, ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... the streets. She was sent for, far and near; borrowed to be looked at; her picture taken by photographers. If one reflects how many foolish and inconsiderate people there are in the world, who have no scruple in making a pet and plaything of a pretty child, one will see how this one unlucky lot of being beautiful in childhood spoiled Lillie's chances of an average share of good sense and goodness. The only hope for such a case lies in the chance of possessing judicious parents. Lillie had not these. Her father ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... Hermit was right. The wolf-cub soon became the pet and plaything of the animal kingdom. With food and care he grew into a round, roly-poly ball of fur. He played merrily with Brutus and the kittens. And though at first he was a bit rough, they and John taught him better ways, so that he kicked and bit his ...
— John of the Woods • Abbie Farwell Brown
... in an adaptation of the smallest midshipman's uniform, and the centre of an admiring party, who were equally diverted by his consequential airs and by his accounts of his sports among the Moors. Happy fellow, he could adapt himself to any society, and was ready to be the pet and plaything of the ship's company, believing himself, when he thought of anything beyond the present, to be full on the road to his ...
— A Modern Telemachus • Charlotte M. Yonge
... crowning shame. Beside her love everything dwindled into nothingness. He was her life, he filled her horizon. Honour itself was lost in the absorbing passion of her love. He had stripped it from her and she was content that it should lie at his feet. He had made her nothing, she was his toy, his plaything, waiting to be thrown aside. She shuddered again and looked around the tent that she had shared with him with a bitter smile and sad, hunted eyes.... After her—who? The cruel thought persisted. She was torn with ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... here," I said, for the benefit of the room at large, for all were now listening, though with some impatience, "that in calling me a 'sport' the deceased member called me a plaything, a diversion. If he had called me a sportsman, which is here defined as 'one who hunts, fishes or fowls,' he would have been not necessarily more accurate but certainly ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 28th, 1920 • Various
... into the Place Vendome; he was stunned by this bludgeon blow. He walked home along the Boulevards trying to think over his position. He saw himself a plaything in the hands of envy, treachery, and greed. What was he in this world of contending ambitions? A child sacrificing everything to the pursuit of pleasure and the gratification of vanity; a poet whose thoughts never ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... me—if it cost me a hundred pounds, I will loose the bloodhounds of justice after you—you shall be made, in chains, to give up your hateful secret. I am no longer a boy; nor you, nor the lawyer that administers my affairs, shall longer make a plaything of me. I will know who I am. Thank God, I ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... commodious, both in length and breadth A lance's flight, for proof of vigor hurl'd. 440 There, phalanx after phalanx, they their host Pour'd dense along, while Phoebus in the van Display'd the awful aegis, and the wall Levell'd with ease divine. As, on the shore Some wanton boy with sand builds plaything walls, 445 Then, sportive spreads them with his feet abroad, So thou, shaft-arm'd Apollo! that huge work Laborious of the Greeks didst turn with ease To ruin, and themselves drovest all to flight. They, thus enforced into the fleet, again 450 Stood fast, with mutual ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... strain should find a flaw, Should a bolt or rivet draw, Then — God help them! for the vessel were a plaything in the tide! With a face of honest cheer, Quoth an English engineer, 'I will answer for the engines that were built on old ...
— Rio Grande's Last Race and Other Verses • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... been a purty nice day all through, Mistress Blythe, and now, right at the last, it's brought its best. Would you like to sit down here outside a bit, while the light lasts? I've just finished this bit of a plaything for my little grand nephew, Joe, up at the Glen. After I promised to make it for him I was kinder sorry, for his mother was vexed. She's afraid he'll be wanting to go to sea later on and she doesn't want the notion encouraged ...
— Anne's House of Dreams • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... Griggs, in a low, deep growl. "Tell 'em, doctor, that they needn't mind those plaything toys so long as they keep ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... keeps their hearts from that haunting foe, l'ennui; He's their plaything, friend, and sentry too, and a lover of devilry; He helps them to hunt out rats or Boches; he burrows and sniffs for mines, And he growls when the murderous shrapnel flies screaming above the lines; His little black nose is a-quiver with ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Nov. 28, 1917 • Various
... her plaything. And she was very glad to find out that no damage seemed to have been done. None of the four wheels was broken, the little wooden platform on which the Lamb stood was not splintered, and there was not so much as a bruise on the little black nose of ...
— The Story of a Lamb on Wheels • Laura Lee Hope
... the Duke—and not a word from her to warn me of it! Engaged—after what she had said to me no longer ago than the past night! Had I been made a plaything to amuse a great lady? Oh, what degradation! I was furious; I snatched up my hat to go to the palace—to force my way to her—to overwhelm her with reproaches. My friend stopped me. He put an ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... of the soul. D'Arthez was, indeed, the child, the boy that Madame de Cadignan had recognized. An illumination something like his own had taken place in the beautiful Diane. At last she had met that superior man whom all women desire and seek, if only to make a plaything of him,—that power which they consent to obey, if only for the pleasure of subduing it; at last she had found the grandeurs of the intellect united with the simplicity of a heart all new to love; and she saw, with ...
— The Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan • Honore de Balzac
... under sex, the very much under sex, in Germany, regarded by the man as his plaything or as his cook-wife and nurse of his children; and she will continue to be the under sex until she develops pride enough to assert herself. She accepts her inferiority without murmur; indeed, she often impresses one as ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin
... of amusement struggled about his mouth at her bairnly imperiousness, but he came obediently enough and sat down. Nevertheless he took away the heavy axe from her and said, "Put this down, then, or give it to me. It is not a pretty plaything for little girls!" ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... not depend upon good resolutions, wise policy, and careful instruction, but upon her real possession of a character which had been formed long before, and which met and foiled him at every point. Lacking this, though a well-meaning, good girl in the main, she would have been a plaything in the hands of such a man. Her absolute truth and crystal purity of principle incased her in heaven's armor, and neither he nor any other evil-disposed person could harm her. She would not listen to the first insidious ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... that I am got into a new camp, and have left my tub at Windsor. It is a little plaything-house that I got out of Mrs. Chenevix's shop, and is the prettiest bauble you ever saw. It is set in enamelled meadows, with ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... back. Or rather, Hobb found him in a valley north of his garden hill, when he was wandering on one of his forlorn searches. And when he found him Hobb could not believe his eyes. For the child was sitting in the middle of the prettiest plaything in the world. It was a tiny farm, covering perhaps a quarter of an acre, with minute barns and yards and stables, and pigmy livestock in the little pastures, and hand-high crops in the little meadows; and smoke came from the tiny chimney ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon
... own; but one thing, Dimitry, I require; I claim that thou Disclose to me thy secret hopes, thy plans, Even thy fears, that hand in hand with thee I may confront life boldly—not in blindness Of childlike ignorance, not as the slave And plaything of my husband's light desires, Thy speechless concubine, but as thy spouse, And worthy helpmate of ...
— Boris Godunov - A Drama in Verse • Alexander Pushkin
... voting "no" by saying that the women of their family and acquaintance do not want it. Thus is the most valuable of human rights—the right of individual representation—made the football of Legislatures, the shuttlecock of voters, kicked and tossed like the veriest plaything in utter disregard of the vital fact that it is the one principle above all others on which ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... utterance was the hope that the Slav would achieve discipline and organization. At that time Russia redeemed from autocracy looked to be a bulwark of Allied victory. The night we talked about Russia at Capetown she had become the prey of red terror and the plaything of organized assassination. ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... creature, wriggled slowly and painfully away from him, and then, just as his victim felt assured of escape, he would reach out a giant palm and slam it down upon the fugitive. Again and again he repeated this operation, until, tiring of the sport, he ended the sufferings of his plaything by devouring it. ...
— Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... they could not stick down into the water and then mounted their sea horses again and rode away. They were delighted to find that now the logs behaved much better, and they grew so bold that they ventured out into deeper water. They had made a wonderful plaything. ...
— The Cave Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... Rome to represent in the imperial palace the family which only ironically can be considered as the most fortunate in Rome. Of three generations, upon whom fate seemed to have showered all the gifts of life, there remained at his side only Claudius, the clownish old man, the plaything of slaves and freedmen, whom no one molested because all could make game of him. A madman and an imbecile,—or at least one who was reputed such by everybody,—this was all that remained of the family of Augustus seventy years after ...
— The Women of the Caesars • Guglielmo Ferrero
... they had need to be strong ones if they will hold out against the arguments of this pretty plaything," laying his hand upon the machine. "However, the choice ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... the spark, proud of his acquisition, came to me, that he had been peeping about in the cabin whilst his mother was packing the chests, and seeing a small brass knob in the wainscot, took it for a plaything, and pulling to get it out, opened a little door of a cupboard, where he had found some very pretty toys that he positively claimed for himself, among which were a small plain gold ring, and a very fine one set with diamonds, which he showed me ...
— Life And Adventures Of Peter Wilkins, Vol. I. (of II.) • Robert Paltock
... child, by Nature's kindly law, Pleased with a rattle, tickled with a straw: Some livelier plaything gives his youth delight, A little louder, but as empty quite: Scarfs, garters, gold, amuse his riper stage, And beads and prayer-books are the toys of age: 280 Pleased with this bauble still, as that before; Till, tired, he sleeps, and life's ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... the higher regions of the soul. D'Arthez was, indeed, the child, the boy that Madame de Cadignan had recognized. An illumination something like his own had taken place in the beautiful Diane. At last she had met that superior man whom all women desire and seek, if only to make a plaything of him,—that power which they consent to obey, if only for the pleasure of subduing it; at last she had found the grandeurs of the intellect united with the simplicity of a heart all new to love; and she saw, with untold happiness, that these ...
— The Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan • Honore de Balzac
... 's a plaything for an hour; Its pretty tricks we try For that or for a longer space— Then ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... together like brother and sister. The priest had taught them their letters out of the selfsame book, and together they had learned their hymns and their verses. Together they had watched Basil at his forge and with wondering eyes had seen him handle the hoof of a horse as easily as a plaything, taking it into his lap and nailing on the shoe. Together they had ridden on sledges in winter and hunted birds' nests in summer, seeking eagerly that marvellous stone which the swallow is said to bring from the ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... happiness of the receiver. Dignities and gifts of every sort are ours for use in carrying out His great designs of good to our fellows. Esther was made queen, not that she might live in luxury and be the plaything of a king, but that she might serve Israel. Power is duty. Responsibility is measured by capacity. Obligation attends advantages. Gifts are burdens. All men are stewards, and God gives His servants their 'talents,' not for selfish ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... that he had reason to be thankful that he had allowed mother and me to remain on board. The 'Victorious' became one of the best disciplined and happiest ships in the service, all because she had a real live plaything on board. She fought several bloody actions. During one of them, when we were tackling a French eighty-gun ship, I got away from mother, who was with the other women in the cockpit attending to the wounded, and slipped up on deck, where before long I found father. 'Here I am,' I said, 'come to ...
— Dick Cheveley - His Adventures and Misadventures • W. H. G. Kingston
... the nearest chair, Cicely made a snatch at Melchisedek as he shot past her. He eluded her, and, happy that at last he was to have a companion in his sport, he took refuge under Mr. Gilwyn's chair where he mounted guard over his plaything and snarled invitingly whenever Cicely tried to seize him. The situation reacted upon the nerves of the guest and caused him to spill a portion of his coffee. Ever curious, ever greedy, Melchisedek scampered ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray
... much of a big child as most men are when another big child tries to take away a plaything. Oh, he was furious, Stewart! But let me tell you something for your comfort. He dwelt most savagely on the fact that you had grabbed in single-handed and beaten a Governor and a United States Senator at their own game! Wonderful, isn't it—admission like that? He has always patronized ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... swirling round opposing boulders, and careering indignant of restraint between long walls of beetling rock. Here when the sun had gone down we would embark with a crew of lithe brown men in a boat hewn from a single tree, seamless and stoutly fashioned to be the unharmed plaything of such rocks and boisterous waters as these. In these rapids the river waked to consciousness of mighty life, tossing our little craft through a riot of dancing waves, whirling it round the base of perpendicular rocks set like adamant in the hissing waters, sweeping it helpless ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... and commons wild Best befit a thoughtless child, A solid wall, an earthen floor, Prison lights, a padlock'd door, Where's no plaything which he may Turn to harm by random play, For in such sport too oft is found A penny-toy will cost a pound. Be wise and merry;—play, but think; For ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... "doesn't everything point to that as the only possible explanation? It's some rich woman's plaything. That accounts for the food, the setting,—everything in fact that has puzzled us. Amateur,—that's the word; effective, delightful but inexperienced. It sticks out ...
— Outside Inn • Ethel M. Kelley
... all chance. The decision of Superintendent Jason. The leadership of this gang. His success in capturing the man, when the time came. In a moment his whole life seemed to have become a plaything to be tossed about at ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... swineherds beheld the sword in Sir Tristram's hands, they said, "That is no fit plaything for a madman to have," and they would have taken it from him, but Sir Tristram would not permit them, for he would not give them the sword, and no one dared to try to take ...
— The Story of the Champions of the Round Table • Howard Pyle
... she continued. "Her little hand touched that strap, she turned it, and looked at it—ah, it was her last plaything! And we were there both together then; she was still alive, I still had her on my lap, in my arms. It was still so nice, so nice! But now I no longer have her; I shall never, never have her again, my poor little Rose, my poor ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... was not the only man who, with a grand theory as to what a wife ought to be, had married from pure fancy; finding too late that she whom he took for a companion was a mere plaything—a doll to be dressed up and sent out into the fashionable world, where alone her happiness could be found. Still the disappointment to such is not the less bitter, because others, too, are suffering from the effect of a like hallucination, and Howard Hastings felt it most ...
— Dora Deane • Mary J. Holmes
... little else, some other things do frequently force themselves on his attention soon after the knot is tied; and as Caroline Waddington will appear in these pages as wife as well as maid, as a man's companion as well as his plaything, it may be well to say now something as to her fitness for ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... should say, as an impartial man, he has represented it fairly. My quarrel with him is, that his works contain nothing worth quoting; and a book that furnishes no quotations, is me judice, no book—it is a plaything. There is no question about the amusement,—amusement of multitudes; but if he who amuses us most is to be our enchanter [Greek text], then my enchanter is the enchanter ...
— Crotchet Castle • Thomas Love Peacock
... away what I wished, but I often gave away the playthings to other children. In short, I was a young Communist, in the full sense of the term. I remember at one time the Princess had a golden snake which coiled itself around her arm as if it were alive, and she gave it to us for a plaything. As I was going home I put the snake on my arm and thought I would give my mother a real fright with it. On the way, however, I met a woman who noticed the snake and begged me to show it to her; and then she said if she could only keep the golden snake, she could release ...
— Memories • Max Muller
... her. As we talked she plied listlessly a fan—a handsome trinket of ostrich plumes. A pretty woman and a fan are the happiest possible combination. There is no severer test of grace than a woman's manner of using a fan. A clumsy woman makes an implement of this plaything, flourishing it to emphasize her talk, or, what is worse, pointing with it like an instructor before a blackboard. But in graceful hands it is unobtrusive, a mere bit of decoration that teases and ...
— Lady Larkspur • Meredith Nicholson
... and her people had been bought by Mr. John P. Parks when they were just children—John and Leanna and Martha. I was the first little negro in the Parks kitchen. From the first they made a pet out of me. I was little like a doll and they treated me like a plaything—spoiled me—rotten. ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... knows rightly what sin is. But he who does not know something of what sin is can have very poor ideas of the Christ who saves from sin. He does not save men in sin, but from sin: not only from penalty,—from sin. Christ is not dead, but alive. And sin is not a painted plaything, but a deadly poison. God forgive them ...
— Out in the Forty-Five - Duncan Keith's Vow • Emily Sarah Holt
... mistaken indulgence, by a blindness, nay, often by a partiality to their faults. Where they hate they hurt themselves, by ill-timed passion and rage. Fortunately for you, I never loved you in that mistaken manner. From your infancy, I made you the object of my most serious attention, and not my plaything. I consulted your real good, not your humors or fancies; and I shall continue to do so while you want it, which will probably be the case during our joint lives; for, considering the difference of our ages, in the course of nature, you will hardly ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... felt for spoiling a new plaything might be borne, if it were not increased, as it commonly is, by the reproaches of friends; much kind eloquence, upon these occasions, is frequently displayed, to bring the sufferer to a proper sense of his folly, till in due time the contrite corners of his ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... creeping grey of dawn, do some remnants of affection yet remain mine, and is her memorial kiss warm upon my cold picture? has she tears for bedfellows, and does she clasp to her bosom and kiss a deluding dream of me? or has she some other new love, a new plaything? Never, O lamp, look thou on that, but be guardian of her whom ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... was altogether welcome. She had never had a playfellow, and Joan was so small and light and delicate that she seemed almost like a plaything, a living doll. The two were never apart. They rambled together about the breezy mountains, catching glimpses of the blue sea here and there; and they ran down the rough, rocky lane to the village on the shore, two miles away; and they kept house on market-days, ...
— The Christmas Child • Hesba Stretton
... to himself that he had never found out anything in reference to his daughter's character. She had been properly educated;—at least he hoped so. He had seen her grow up, pretty, sweet, affectionate, always obedient to him;—the most charming plaything in the world on the few occasions in which he had allowed himself to play. But as to her actual disposition, he had never taken any trouble to inform himself. She had been left to her mother,—as other ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... methods. He "invited them to dinner"; "had them often at dinner for a year or more:" but could make no progress in that way. "Who is this we have got for a Governor?" said the noble lords privately to each other: "A Nuremberger Tand" (Nuremberg plaything—wooden image, such as they make at Nuremberg), said they, grinning, in a thick-skinned way: "If it rained Burggraves all the year round, none of them would come to luck in this country;" and continued their feuds, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... improve his mind, and enlighten his understanding. On the contrary, his fellow-'prentice, with worn-out coat and uncombed hair, overpowered with beer, indicated by the half-gallon pot before him, is fallen asleep; and from the shuttle becoming the plaything of the wanton kitten, we learn how he slumbers on, inattentive alike to his own and his master's interest. The ballad of Moll Flanders, on the wall behind him, shows that the bent of his mind is towards that which is bad; and his book of instructions lying ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... but marvel at the subjection into which this proud and self-dependent woman had willfully flung herself, hanging her life upon the chance of an angry or favorable regard from a person who, a little while before, had seemed the plaything of a moment. But, in Miriam's eyes, Donatello was always, thenceforth, invested with the tragic dignity of their hour of crime; and, furthermore, the keen and deep insight, with which her love endowed her, ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... to meet his discontent with a shrug of her shoulders, and to arrange her life in her own way. Ulrich was her comfort, pride and plaything, but sporting with him ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... its proprietors his unqualified friendship, and a day rarely went by without a visit from him. He quickly learned to adapt himself to the rule that he must not finger things, nor interrupt when customers were present. He usually brought some plaything with him,—most frequently the flannel donkey,—and amused himself quite happily, with an occasional appeal to the sympathy of ...
— The Pleasant Street Partnership - A Neighborhood Story • Mary F. Leonard
... and seeing himself bereft of him he began the saddest and most doleful lament in the world, so loud that Don Quixote awoke at his exclamations and heard him saying, "O son of my bowels, born in my very house, my children's plaything, my wife's joy, the envy of my neighbours, relief of my burdens, and lastly, half supporter of myself, for with the six-and-twenty maravedis thou didst earn me daily ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... affecting every man in this wide land. Let us, then, have the centralization which shall recognize the United States as the supreme political power of the land, which shall no longer allow the political rights of citizens of the United States to be the plaything of thirty-seven petty legislatures, of thirty thousand ambitious demagogues. Without this, our National experiment is a failure; without this, we are not freemen, but slaves; without this, we are neither protected nor self-protecting; without this, centralized ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... superintending the making of new roads in that quarter, and there rested our weary limbs, some in hammock, some on the tables, some, again, on the clay floor. Here I saw, as I saw every ten minutes, something new—that quaint vegetable plaything described by Humboldt and others; namely, the spathe of the Timit palm. It encloses, as in most palms, a branched spadix covered with innumerable round buds, most like a head of millet, two feet and a half ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... and may change them between dinner and tea, as he has done several times already? The real principle of the party, its seminal and vital principle alike, is the power of the President, and its policy is every moment at the mercy of his discretion. That power has too often been the plaything of whim, and that discretion the victim of ill-temper or vanity, for us to have any other feeling left than regret for the one and distrust of ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... full-grown men. One day a little fellow named Lomenie delighted the king with a gift. The king was amusing himself with a cross-bow, which for the time being happened to be in special favor. He loaned the bow for a few moments to Lomenie. Soon, however, anxious to regain the valued plaything, he held out his hand to take it back. His governess, the Marchioness de Senecey, ...
— Louis XIV., Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... the terrible plaything, and claims his privilege to be the elder "in the heritage ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson
... all claim to the throne; but being selfish, like the rest, I refuse to renounce all claim to the woman the Archbishops themselves chose as my wife, neither shall I allow the case to be made further the plaything of circumstance. Your kinswoman, no later ago than this afternoon, confessed her love for me and her complete disregard of any position I may hold in this realm. Now, Father Ambrose, I ask you several questions. Is it in consonance with the rules of ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr
... should have done if it hadn't been for Harry Lant, the weather being very trying, almost as trying as our hot red coats and heavy knapsacks, and flower-pot busbies, with a round white ball like a child's plaything on the top; but no matter how tired he was, Harry Lant had always something to say or do, and even if the colonel was close by, he'd say or do it. Now, there happened to be an elephant walking along ...
— Begumbagh - A Tale of the Indian Mutiny • George Manville Fenn
... The worthy woman paid little heed to what, in her ignorance, she regarded merely as pretty stones, but she happened to speak about them to a neighboring farmer, who asked to look at them. Already tired of his new plaything, the child had thrown the stones away, but one was found in the field close by, and the neighbor, a shrewd Dutchman, who had heard of certain stones picked up in that locality having a certain value, offered to buy it. The good woman laughed ...
— The Mask - A Story of Love and Adventure • Arthur Hornblow
... Partly, it is that he is disappointed that she is not like her mother; he had made up his mind to another Lucy, and her Williams face took him by surprise, and, partly, he is not a man to adapt himself to a child. She must be trained to help unobtrusively in his occupations; the unknowing little plaything her mother was, she never can be. I am afraid he will never adapt himself to English life again—his soul seems to be in his mines, and if as you say he is happy and valued there—though it is folly to look forward to the wrench again, instead of rejoicing in the present, ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... is tired of boys," cried Isaac to a chief dancing near. "What has he done that he be made the plaything of children? Let him die the ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... prince, but he was sick and could not run about and play like other children. He lay in a little white bed in the old woman's room, and the little prince, after he had eaten the cooky, spoke to him, and took out his favorite plaything, which he always carried in his pocket, and showed ...
— The Story-teller • Maud Lindsay
... and worldly excuses have force with us: 'We have business to look after; men must live; we have no time to think about religion; I have built a new mill that occupies my thoughts; I have found a new plaything, and I must try it; I have married a wife, and therefore I cannot come.' So God and His claims, Christ and His love, are hustled into a corner to be attended to when opportunity serves, but to be neglected in the meantime. And the same result follows, not by miracle, but by natural ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... infant grandchild is to become his rival, and he deliberately orders him to be left in a gloomy forest alone, to die of cold and hunger. When the imaginary danger has passed away, he seeks amusement in making the same grandchild his plaything, and overwhelms him with favors bestowed solely for the gratification of the giver, under the influence of an affection almost as purely animal as that of a ...
— Cyrus the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... despair which springs from his hate of evil. How comes it that human nature rises above its origin, and is able—nay, obliged—to condemn the evil which God permits? Is man finite in power, a mere implement of a mocking will so far as knowledge goes, the plaything of remorseless forces, and yet author and first source of something in himself which invests him with a dignity that God Himself cannot share? Is the moral consciousness which, by its very nature, must bear witness against the Power, although it cannot arrest ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones
... him, piped his few notes with unbearable intensity. Discordant chirps assailed his ears from the lattice where the climbing rose put forth its few last blooms. Swaying giddily in a crazy pattern upon the white floor of the veranda, was the shadow of the rose, the plaything of every passing wind. He remembered the moonlight night which might have been either yesterday or in some previous life, as far as his confused perceptions went, when Edith had stood with the rose in her hand, and the clear, sharply-defined shadow ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... have a dog; it is like having a perpetual baby; it is the plaything and crony of the whole house. It keeps them all young. All unite upon Dick. And then he tells no tales, betrays no secrets, never sulks, asks no troublesome questions, never gets into debt, never coming ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... had come to assume a vastly different aspect from what it had displayed in times past. Heretofore it had been a plaything which like a juggler's tinsel ball might be tossed from hand to hand at will. Now it was no plaything—no glittering bauble. It was something big and serious and splendid—because Billy lived in it; something that demanded all ...
— Miss Billy • Eleanor H. Porter
... marked contrast to the bleak wastes above. When I climbed the steep road on that autumn afternoon, and, passing the zone of tall, withered bracken, reached the open moorland, I seemed to have come out merely to be the plaything of the elements; for the south-westerly gale, when it chose to do so, blew so fiercely that it was difficult to make any progress at all. Overhead was a dark roof composed of heavy masses of cloud, forming long parallel lines of gray right to the horizon. On each side of the ...
— Yorkshire—Coast & Moorland Scenes • Gordon Home
... balls, the twins took unto themselves a big and heavy croquet ball,—found in the Avery woodshed. To be sure, it stung and bruised their hands. What matter? At any rate, they continued endangering their lives and beauties by reckless pitching of the ungainly plaything. ...
— Prudence of the Parsonage • Ethel Hueston
... called anything but Robin—was preparing something over the fire for the evening meal. Rachel went up and kissed her father. He scattered the children from him to make room for her. He loved her dearly. Robin loved her dearly. When Robin was a grown-up young man the pretty baby had come to be his plaything. Robin seemed to love her still better than he loved his ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... will be simply because, like Turkey, it harmlessly holds a strategic point too valuable to be allowed to pass into the hands of any one of the nations which covet it. And it is also easy to foresee that in the interval existing until its absorption, Korea must remain, also like Turkey, merely the plaything of diplomacy and the battle-ground for ...
— A Short History of Russia • Mary Platt Parmele
... was not his kisses, not even his disdain of what he took, though that enraged her: it was his words as he cast her off and left her. She sat up on the bed, clenching her small hands. How dared he? How dared he? She could not ignore those words and she would let him know that he had been her plaything all the time. ...
— Moor Fires • E. H. (Emily Hilda) Young
... Henrietta Plunkett, rising to the foothills of her platform manner, "to become a parasite, a man's bond slave, his creature? Do you wish to be his toy, his plaything?" ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... with her young lover and her innocent dreams of the future, troubled herself but little concerning what was taking place around her, and did not perceive that others were ready to make her young heart the plaything of domestic and ...
— Queen Hortense - A Life Picture of the Napoleonic Era • L. Muhlbach
... make it easy and generally communicable, and yet at the same time not supplant thoroughness by popularity. For scholarly completeness must not be sacrificed to popularity to please the people, unless science is to become a plaything or trifling." It is perfectly plain that all that was said before of the psychological and the logical methods must be taken into account in the manner of ...
— Pedagogics as a System • Karl Rosenkranz
... humble and hearty thanks that my friend did not see fit to give this book to his infant as a plaything, nor use it as an ash-tray for his burning cigar, nor as ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley
... despise thee," said he. "Thou would'st not have an honorable Prince! Thou could'st not prize the rose and the nightingale, but thou wast ready to kiss the swineherd for the sake of a trumpery plaything. Thou ...
— Andersen's Fairy Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... sailor, how she talked with him and looked at him, how in the first small point she won over him. He thought of an ancient tale of Circe and the swine. Was he a free man, a man's man or was he a woman's plaything? . . . It flashed over him again that it might be that Zoraida was mad. Even now, that he seemed to be reading her inmost soul, was she but playing the siren to his imaginings? Was this some barbaric whim of hers or was she, ...
— Daughter of the Sun - A Tale of Adventure • Jackson Gregory
... or undressed dancer is nothing more than a plaything, or something to help pass the hour; he will look at and criticise her with much less enthusiasm than he would a she-camel, and remunerate her or her owner according to the measure of pleasure he has found in ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... distrust of the independent, self-reliant woman, he must needs go to the opposite extreme, and let himself be drawn to one capable of little else in the world but ornamentation. Doris, she knew, was fitted only to be a rich man's plaything. Dudley, she felt instinctively, would start off by expecting of her things she had never had to give, and in his dismay and disappointment might wreck ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... was never afraid of anything—when the horses pranced past him, and the troopers pushed him aside, he looked up into their faces and smiled. And when he had anything, a piece of bread, or an apple, or a plaything, he shared it with his playmates; and his little face, and his pretty voice, and all his pleasant ways, made that corner bright. He was like a flower growing there; ...
— A Little Pilgrim • Mrs. Oliphant
... inexhaustible fund of ingenuity and invention; but, like most geniuses, received more blame than praise. When quite small he constructed a sort of gun made of wood, which would discharge a small ball of paper, pebble, &c. This became a very popular plaything in the nursery, and for once the inventor received due praise, on account of its keeping the children so quiet. But one day Fred undertook to teach the year old baby the art of shooting with it; and with a small corn ...
— A Grandmother's Recollections • Ella Rodman
... forehead and tresses of Angela, and says gently, "I never wish to recall these cruel memories. I should have said nothing to you, assured myself that there is no danger in bringing this imbecile to you as a plaything, and then——" ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... strung him down as if he were in a coop, and his dulled senses failed for a moment to tell what ailed him. At last, after seconds that seemed like ages, it dawned on him; the masts had snapped like carrots, both were over the side, and the hulk was only a half-sunken plaything for the seas to hurl hither and thither. Larmor? Gone! How long? These things chased each other through his dim mind; he slipped his arm out and crept clear; then a perception struck him with the force ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman
... in former days the rule of faith—sufficient for all wants, powerful over all difficulties. Through me they shall know that in times past it was the guardian of the heart; through me they shall see that in times present it is the plaything of the proud; through me they shall fear that in times future it may become the exile of the Church! To this task I have vowed myself; to overthrow this idolatry—which, like another paganism, rises among us with its images, its relics, its jewels, and its gold—I will devote my child, ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... There was no one in the room but her married sister. "I dreamed Death was in the room with me just now," said she. "And he had an old woman with him whom he called his Sister. She seemed to me to be giving my babies something: but what it was I don't know. At first I thought it was a plaything; but now I think it was a sorrow. At least. . ...
— Drolls From Shadowland • J. H. Pearce
... yet neither you or I know much about, I fancy there are mixtures of "the just and the unjust," of "the evil and the good." We have a very pleasant family this year. The youngest (for I omit the black baby in the kitchen) we call Lily. She is my pet and plaything, and is quite as affectionate as you are. Then comes a damsel named Beatrice, who has taken me upon trust just as you did. You may be thankful that your parents are not like hers, for she is to be educated for the world; music, French ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... put up her hand and took mine prisoner; but merely drew it away from the forbidden ringlet, and then immediately released it. Now, I am a fidgety little man, and always love to have something in my fingers; so that, being debarred from my wife's curls, I looked about me for any other plaything. On the front seat of the coach there was one of those small baskets in which travelling ladies who are too delicate to appear at a public table generally carry a supply of gingerbread, biscuits and cheese, cold ham, and other light refreshments, merely ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... a fire chief, son, and a good one. That was a great game. But the game is over now, and you're not a fire chief any more. You're Tony Robeson, and the little hook-and-ladder cart is your plaything. Father wants you to bring it here and put it in its place in the house. It looks a little bit like rain, and the cart mustn't be left out to get ...
— The Indifference of Juliet • Grace S. Richmond
... blossoming. As soon as Lysias spied a small packet in the boy's hand he did not take it from him but snatched up the child, who was by no means remarkably small, by the leather belt that fastened up his loin-cloth, tossed him up as if he were a plaything, and set him down on the table by ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... walks round the various circles of science like the master of each; and strange to be mentioned to white men, this Mr. St. George is a mulatto, the son of an African mother."[24] Less happy was the career of Francis Williams of Jamaica, a plaything of the human gods. Born of negro parents who had earned special privilege in the island, he was used by the Duke of Montague in a test of negro mental capacity and given an education in an English grammar school and at Cambridge ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... of those little creatures born to be the plaything of Fate. When she was seventeen she married Jack Spaulding—he was part genius, but more fool. He was caught by the girl's spirituality and brightness and he couldn't any more comprehend her than a raw-boned Indian could understand a water sprite. To him she was a woman he wanted—nothing more. He ...
— A Son of the Hills • Harriet T. Comstock
... at the Rhine; but as a French subject I should be like those two-headed monstrosities they show at the fairs. Besides, I hate French poetry. What measured glitter! Not that German poetry has ever been to me more than a divine plaything. A laurel-wreath on my grave, place or withhold, I care not; but lay on my coffin a sword, for I was as brave a soldier as your Canning in the Liberation War of Humanity. But my Thirty Years' War is over, and I die 'with sword unbroken, and a broken heart.'" His head fell back in ineffable ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... cannot thoroughly imagine, there is also in very many a great deal which can only be truly apprehended for the first time at that age. Youth has a principle of consolidation; we begin with the whole. Small sciences are the labors of our manhood; but the round universe is the plaything of the boy. His fresh mind shoots out vaguely and crudely into the infinite and eternal. Nothing is hid from the depth of it; there are no boundaries to its vague and wandering vision. Early science, it has been said, begins in utter nonsense; ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... proverbial rule against playing with fire, but it is one which, as Davison would have said, was evidently made by average people, who would in fact rather play with something else. There are others to whom fire is the only really amusing plaything; and though the by-stander may hold his breath, nine times out of ten they will come out of the game as unscathed as the professional fire-eater. This was not precisely true of Mildred, who had still a wide taste in playthings; but in the absence of anything new and exciting in her environment, ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... few unpleasant recollections respecting the fervent and unequivocal passion of Lady Sara. Though guilty, it sprung from a headlong ardor of disposition which formed at once the error and its palliation. He saw that love was not welcomed by her (at least he thought so) as a plaything, but struggled against as with a foe. He had witnessed her tortures; he pitied them, and to render her happy, would gladly have made any sacrifice short of his conscience. Too well assured of being all the ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... hymns of the church and the plain-song. But when the hymn was sung, and the daily lesson completed, Swiftly they hurried away to the forge of Basil the blacksmith. There at the door they stood, with wondering eyes to behold him Take in his leathern lap the hoof of the horse as a plaything, Nailing the shoe in its place; while near him the tire of the cart-wheel Lay like a fiery snake, coiled round in a circle of cinders. Oft on autumnal eves, when without in the gathering darkness Bursting with light seemed the smithy, through every cranny and crevice, Warm by the forge ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... I'm looking after, not the future ten or twelve years removed. If Jack hasn't that football to-morrow he'll have me, and I've no desire in the present condition of my physical well-being to be used by him as a plaything. Deprived of the leathern ball, he might use me as a football instead, and I must rest. That's all there is about it. Besides, if he becomes an aspirant for football honors now it will be a good thing for him. He'll take care of himself and try to improve his physique if he once ...
— The Booming of Acre Hill - And Other Reminiscences of Urban and Suburban Life • John Kendrick Bangs
... open this fish to cook it, she found within it a large piece of glass, crystal clear, which she threw to the children for a plaything. A Jewess who entered the shop saw this piece of glass, picked it up, and offered a few pieces of money for it. Hassan's wife dared not do anything now without her husband's leave, and Hassan, being summoned, refused all the offers of the Jewess, perceiving that the piece of ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... shall tell you the difference between hawks and hernshaws from the very beginning. This gift is worth something, as you'll soon find out. Now, good-by, my baby. Sleep well, and grow fast. Here's a pretty plaything for you,"—taking from her pocket a big, beautiful bubble, and tossing it in the air. "Run fast," she said, "blow hard, follow the bubble, catch it if you can; but, above all things, keep it flying. Its name is Fortune,—a ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... English Dictionary," and this passage from the Diary is given as a quotation. The word appears as angelot in Phillips's "English Dictionary" (1678), and is used in Browning's "Sordello," as a "plaything ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... the beast suddenly drops his skin and is a prince, and I believed it seemed to Babbie that some such change had come over this man, her plaything. ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... Italian aeronaut made an ascension from London which was viewed by King George III. and his ministers, among them William Pitt. But the early enthusiasm for ballooning quickly died down to mere curiosity. It became apparent to all that merely to rise into the air, there to be the helpless plaything of the wind, was but a useless and futile accomplishment. Pleasure seekers and mountebanks used balloons for their own purposes, but serious experimenters at once saw that if the invention of the balloon was to be of the slightest practical value some method must be devised for controlling ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... in Chinese art.[634] He retired to Lo-yang where he spent nine years in the Shao-Lin[635] temple gazing silently at a wall, whence he was popularly known as the wall-gazer. One legend says that he sat so long in contemplation that his legs fell off, and a kind of legless doll which is a favourite plaything in Japan is still called by his name. But according to another tale he preserved his legs. He wished to return to India but died in China. When Sung Yun, the traveller mentioned above, was returning from India, he met him in a mountain pass bare-footed and carrying ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... believe thou knowest, Harry, is the sport, the mere plaything, of gratitude and pity. Kindness will melt my firmest resolutions in a moment. Entreaty will lead me to the world's end. Gentle accents, mournful looks, in my brother, was a claim altogether irresistible. The mildness, the condescension which I ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... mean. I have disputed with Augustine and Jerome, with Gregory and him of the Golden Mouth, St. Chrysostom. And they comprehended me still less. Miserable men walk groping in the dark, and Error lifts over their head her monstrous canopy. Simple and sage alike are the plaything of eternal falsehood." ...
— The Well of Saint Clare • Anatole France
... sit beside me, as now, and treat me as fully out in Society, would have thriled me to the core. But that day had gone. I realized that he was not only to old, but to flirtatous. He was one who would not look on a woman's Love as precious, but as a plaything. ...
— Bab: A Sub-Deb • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... intone in concert a strange chant which is as tangled as a skein of wool after serving as a plaything for a kitten's prolonged game of sport. Sadly the chant meanders, wavers, to a high, wailing note. Then, as it were, it soars yet higher towards the dull, murky sky, breaks suddenly into a snarl, and, growling like a wild beast in terror, dies away to ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... mile, Fergus resumed the discourse in a different tone. 'I believe I was warm, my dear Edward, but you provoke me with your want of knowledge of the world. You have taken pet at some of Flora's prudery, or high-flying notions of loyalty, and now, like a child, you quarrel with the plaything you have been crying for, and beat me, your faithful keeper, because my arm cannot reach to Edinburgh to hand it to you. I am sure, if I was passionate, the mortification of losing the alliance of such ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... and keep a mystic vigil that sometimes lasted for hours. She kept her gaze fixed on that strange little figure whenever it roved up and down the suite of rooms or clambered the pyramid of brown steps that might have made such a glorious plaything for any other child. And even when her son was hidden behind the wall of volumes he had built, the woman would still stare in his direction, but then her eyes seemed to look inwards; at such times she appeared to be wrapped in ...
— The Wonder • J. D. Beresford
... but a wanton maiden, The plaything of thy idle hours; But laughing streams with gold are laden, And sweets are hidden 'neath ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... eloquence. The squaw's eyes danced with delight, and he read the look to suit himself. Already he anticipated a favourable answer. But he was quickly undeceived. Aim-sa merely revelled in the passion she had aroused, like a mischievous child with a forbidden plaything. She enjoyed it for a moment, then her face suddenly became grave, and her eyelids drooped over the wonderful eyes which he thought had told him so much. And her answer came with a shake ...
— In the Brooding Wild • Ridgwell Cullum
... advice. But Louis XV was only a boy, a plaything in the hands of his ministers. In an earlier chapter [Footnote: See above, pp. 255 f.] we have seen how under the duke of Orleans, who was prince regent from 1715 to 1723, France entered into war with Spain, and how finance was upset by speculation; and how under Cardinal ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... the burning trestle. Once he muttered aloud, "All our lives, a priceless engine, valuable freight, rolling stock, all saved!" Then, whirling rapidly on his heel, he said, "Ellis, we want your boy on the road when he's bigger. The boy who can invent a useful plaything and keep his head in an emergency is the boy we want to make into a man on the great Transcontinental. Will you ...
— The Shagganappi • E. Pauline Johnson
... midday the shaft of the engine—an enormous mass of malleable iron—broke with a sort of oblique fracture, evidently from the terrific strains which the tremendous seas inflicted as they thumped and tossed this gigantic vessel like a plaything. We were near the island called Zembra, which is in sight of the Bay of Tunis. The wind, which had been a full gale ahead when we did not require it, now fell to a dead calm, and a current was drifting our gallant ship, with her ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... disparity in numbers between itself and its neighbour. Luck and stubbornness and the incalculable counted for much; it was half the battle not to know you were beaten, and it is so still. Even to-day, a great nation, it seems, may still make its army the plaything of its gentlefolk, abandon important military appointments to feminine intrigue, and trust cheerfully to the homesickness and essential modesty of its influential people, and the simpler patriotism of its colonial dependencies when it comes at last to the bloody ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... and tombs had to be visited, but did not appeal to all tastes. The Bazaars did. So did the Zoo, more fascinating than any other zoo, because each animal has its trick, or pet, or plaything. ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... his enormous head gravely, and said in a displeased tone, "Don't you know, child, who this trembling little creature with his struggling tiny animal is, that you have chosen for a plaything? Of all the dwarfs down in the valley below, he is the most useful; he works hard and indefatigably in scorching heat as well as in windy cold weather, so that the fields may produce fruit for us. He who scoffs at or maltreats him will be punished by Heaven. Take the little labourer ...
— Legends of the Rhine • Wilhelm Ruland
... been little more than a plaything of the scientists—or, at least, no practical use had been made of it. As it was a practising physician, Gilbert, who first laid the foundation for experimenting with the new substance, so again it was a medical man who first ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... his moments of stolen happiness with a speechless and stealthy delight which was a new sensation to him. The few young girls whom he had met with, in his father's narrow circle at Zurich, had felt a mischievous pleasure in treating him like a quaint little plaything; the strongest impression he could make on their hearts was an impression in which their lap-dogs might have rivaled him; the deepest interest he could create in them was the interest they might have felt ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... made Heinrich's plaything—his tool!" thought he. "Now he ridicules me, and I am compelled to bear it! That horrible being is not ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen
... when she grew older, she would not want every thing that belonged to her brothers. If Charles had a plaything, Katy wanted it, and would cry till she got it. Very often, just to make her stop crying, her mother made poor Charley ...
— Dolly and I - A Story for Little Folks • Oliver Optic
... She had given her beautiful coral beads to the Indian girl, and now Millicent had taken possession of her doll. She tried to remember that she was a big girl now, ten years old, and that dolls were for babies like six-year-old Millicent. But "Martha Stoddard" was something more than a plaything to Anne; she could not part with it. But how could she take it ...
— A Little Maid of Massachusetts Colony • Alice Turner Curtis
... consent! We may, by an exercise of will, throw ourselves into opposition to necessity, and refuse it homage and obedience. In that consists our moral liberty. But except for that, we belong, body and goods, to the world. We are its playthings, as the dust is the plaything of the wind, or the dead leaf of the floods. God at least respects our dignity, but the world rolls us contemptuously along in its merciless waves, in order to make it plain that we are its ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... lineage—and a singer in comic opera! Not for nothing had he heard of the twin brothers Cunyngham who fell on Flodden Field. It is true that at the present time he and she mingled in the same society; for he was the pet and plaything of the hour in the fashionable world; but he was not entirely blinded by that favor; he did not wholly mistake his position. And even supposing—a wild conjecture!—that she entertained an exceptional regard for him—that she could be induced to think of marrying him—would she be content that ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
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