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More "Trifle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... "Yes, a trifle faster; but I'll probably have to work up to a little better speed in order to get where I want to go before our goal begins to run away ...
— A Columbus of Space • Garrett P. Serviss
... "Don't trifle with me, any more, James; I can't bear it much longer, I feel that I can't—" poor Mrs. Braddock said in a plaintive tone, while the tears came to ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... away and conveyed like his portmanteau. The rules are, however, generally enforced with great civility; but the commis was not civil. Early rising, or sitting up late, had put him out of temper, and the passion into which he worked himself about this trifle was very amusing. “There was room inside, and why could not messieurs accommodate themselves in the voiture like ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... pretty well—pretty well," answered Midas in a discontented tone. "But, after all, it is but a trifle when you consider that it has taken me my whole life to get it together. If one could live a thousand years, he might ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... and our offerings. There is a wonderful collection on His altar of what many people would think rubbish, just as many a mother has laid away among her treasures some worthless article which her child had once given her—a weed plucked by the roadside in a long past summer day, some trifle of rare preciousness in the child's eyes, and of none in any others than her own. She opens her drawer and brings out the poor little thing, and her eyes fill and her heart fills as she looks. ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... savory and sumptuous, I disregarded the bounty of education and nurture of father and mother, and paid no heed to the virtue of precept and injunction of teachers and friends, with the result that I incurred the punishment, of failure recently in the least trifle, and the reckless waste of half my lifetime. There have been meanwhile, generation after generation, those in the inner chambers, the whole mass of whom could not, on any account, be, through my influence, allowed to fall into extinction, in order that I, unfilial ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... is not a real one, like the two last, and it is based on an ignorance of the laws of mechanics, which had not at that time been formulated. We know now that a ball dropped from a high tower, so far from lagging, drops a minute trifle in front of the foot of a perpendicular, because the top of the tower is moving a trace faster than the bottom, by reason of the diurnal rotation. But, ignoring this, a stone dropped from the lamp of a railway carriage ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... other, Pierre. My own supposition is by far the most probable, that it is the work of some fanatic; but at any rate, we will be on the watch tonight. It is too late to do anything else and, were I to go round to our friends, they would mock at me for paying any attention to such a trifle as a chalk ...
— Saint Bartholomew's Eve - A Tale of the Huguenot WarS • G. A. Henty
... again, as they started to their sleeping apartment. Yes, he was undoubtedly putting on "ombongpoing"; he would have to take up golf. He was wearing a little American flag dangling from his watch chain, and she wondered if that wasn't a trifle crude. Gladys herself now wore a real diamond ring, and had learned to say "vahse" and "baahth." She yawned prettily as she took off her lovely brown "tailor-made," and reflected that such things come with ...
— 100%: The Story of a Patriot • Upton Sinclair
... said gravely, "I know you love me! And Julia, my whole soul is simply on fire for you. Don't—don't let any mere trifle come between us now. Let me tell my mother and ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... Amedee turned over in his mind various other recollections of former days. He has been a trifle estranged from Madame Roger since his marriage to Maria, but he sometimes takes little Maurice to see her. She has sheltered and given each of Colonel Lantz's daughters a dowry. Pretty Rosine Combarieu's face rises up before him, his childhood's companion, ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee
... prevail between the Syrian and Polish Jews. The former being in possession of the place, oblige the foreighers to pay excessively high for their lodgings; and compel them also to contribute considerable sums towards the relief of the indigent Syrians, while they themselves never give the smallest trifle to the ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt
... while Mary was with her grandparents, but it was not, from her point of view, a very satisfactory visit. Reggie was grumpy, and looked very tired and overworked. Moreover, Mary, though she could not have confessed it for the world, was just a trifle hurt that he never reminded her of that ...
— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker
... shrunken and misshapen for him to wear again, came next. Dismayed, she inspected the battered loot; then was inspired to quick alterations. Pant-legs cut off well above the baggy knees made passable shorts; the sweater bulged a trifle at the shoulders, it fit adequately elsewhere—and something more ...
— Master of the Moondog • Stanley Mullen
... a large hydraulic press, with an adjustable head, and a weighing system for recording the loading developed by a triple-plunger pump. It has a maximum clearance of 65 ft. between heads; the clearance in the machine is a trifle more than 6 ft. between screws, and the heads are 6 ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, vol. LXX, Dec. 1910 • Herbert M. Wilson
... sense," replied Roseen, a trifle loftily; "ye have no call to be castin' that up at me now. Me an' me grandfather has never fell ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)
... member of our family who could be described as a trifle 'common,' she would always take care to remark to strangers, when Swann was mentioned, that he could easily, if he had wished to, have lived in the Boulevard Haussmann or the Avenue de l'Opera, and that he was the son of old M. Swann who must have left four ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... about the castle, licking an unhealed sword-thrust, that wishes our Sholto had been a trifle less faithful." ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... minutes slipped by, and she did not begin to feel that she had been wicked. The meditation remained pleasant. At last she realized suddenly that she was not going to feel wicked. She was surprised and even a trifle horror-stricken by her insensibility. Then, fairly faced by it, she came to the conclusion that, in a woman cursed with such a brute of a husband, such insensibility was not only natural, ...
— The Loudwater Mystery • Edgar Jepson
... efforts which may be inspired by such frenzied fanaticism as exists among the Mormons in Utah. This is the first rebellion which has existed in our Territories, and humanity itself requires that we should put it down in such a manner that it shall be the last. To trifle with it would be to encourage it and to render it formidable. We ought to go there with such an imposing force as to convince these deluded people that resistance would be vain, and thus spare the effusion ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... that she never did any great penances. That was because her fervour counted as nothing the few that were allowed her. It happened, however, that she fell ill through wearing for too long a time a small iron Cross, studded with sharp points, that pressed into her flesh. "Such a trifle would not have caused this," she said afterwards, "if God had not wished thus to make me understand that the greater austerities of the Saints are not meant for me—nor for the souls that walk in the path ...
— The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux • Therese Martin (of Lisieux)
... fresh beef heads, tongues, hearts and bellies; but it is not surprising to find that the next outlay for equipment was for a large new hospital in 1794, costing L341 for building its brick walls alone. Yaws became serious, but that was a trifle as compared with dysentery; and pleurisy, pneumonia, fever and dropsy had also to be reckoned with. About fifty of the new negroes were quartered for several years in a sort of hospital camp at Spring Garden, where the routine even for ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... Bohmer, who is perspiring, although the air is cold—"perfectly! We understand, and we are profoundly grateful. If—" His hands fumble nervously at a case. "If you would deign, madame, to accept this trifle as an ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... day we passed on to Banias. How different a matter is travelling in that country from merely drawing a pencil line across the map from one point to another, and measuring the distance of that line. By such a method of making a journey it is but a trifle of thirty miles from Soor to Hhasbeya, and less than a hundred and twenty from the latter to Jerusalem. (I mention these places because they belong to the journey here described,) and it may be said by stay-at-home travellers in a carpeted saloon, at a mahogany table, that these ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn
... down beside us. His mother noticed that he had turned very pale again, and the lad owned to be in some pain: he had twisted his foot that morning, in helping Maud and Miss Silver across the ice; but it was a mere trifle—not worth mentioning. ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... that covenant before? Life is not so long, nor happiness so common, that we can afford to trifle away two years of it. I wish you had told me when I last came here of that old photograph ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... own death warrant for that trifle," replied Tim, his rosy face aglow, as he caught ...
— Klondike Nuggets - and How Two Boys Secured Them • E. S. Ellis
... and I dare say he won't the next." The young fellow came lounging across the room with his hands in his pockets as he spoke. "I suppose he has gone on preaching till it's his second nature. Talk of the girl in the fairy-tale dropping toads and things from her lips! Why, she was a trifle to old Clifton. I do think he can't open his mouth without letting ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... that is not the point. He needs something very different from a Baxter law to save him from the power of his appetite. Besides, the law is unjust. The rich man may get just as drunk as the poor man, and may be fined the same, but what of that? Five dollars is a trifle to him, so he pays it and goes on his way, while his less fortunate brother is kicked into a loathsome cell. There never has been, never can, and never will be a law enacted that prevent men from drinking liquor, especially those in whom there is a dominant appetite for it. The idea of licensing ...
— Fifteen Years in Hell • Luther Benson
... disguise it, so long as he is ranging over his story at a height, chronicling, summarizing, foreshortening, he must be present to the reader as a narrator and a showman. It is only when he descends and approaches a certain occasion and sets a scene with due circumspection—rarely and a trifle awkwardly, as we saw—that he can for the time being efface the thought of his ...
— The Craft of Fiction • Percy Lubbock
... could see matters in their true light; or if his vision were a trifle clouded, the clouds were tinged with rose instead of black, as they had ...
— The Young Wireless Operator—As a Fire Patrol - The Story of a Young Wireless Amateur Who Made Good as a Fire Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss
... he announced, with enthusiasm; "that thar's sort of ashy purple." Still, he was not satisfied. His first brush-stroke showed a trifle dead and heavy. It lacked the soft lucid quality that the hills held, though it was close enough to truth to have satisfied any eye save one of uncompromising sincerity. Samson, even though he was hopelessly daubing, and knew it, ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... who has taken but one penny of unlawful emolument, (and all have taken many pennies of unlawful emolument,) does not dare to complain of the most abandoned extortion and cruel oppression in any of his fellow-servants. He who has taken a trifle, perhaps as the reward of a good action, is obliged to be silent, when he sees whole nations desolated around him. The great criminal at the head of the service has the laws in his hand; he is always able to prove the small offence, and crush the person ...
— The Works Of The Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IX. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... London in the earlier Victorian time." Where Dickens emulated the farces and the melodramas of forgotten British playwrights, Daudet was influenced rather by the virile dramas of Dumas fils and Augier. But in "Fromont and Risler," not only is the plot a trifle stagy, but the heroine herself seems almost a refugee of the footlights; exquisitely presented as Sidonie is, she fails quite to captivate or convince, perhaps because her sisters have been seen so often ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... in the same vein: "My cellar experiment was not so unsuccessful as you imagine. I succeeded to my entire satisfaction in taking three inches of skin, a little of the flesh and a trifle of bone from the front of my left leg, and, as the result, got one week's entire leisure with my leg in a chair. The experiment was so satisfactory that I deem it needless to try it again, having established beyond a doubt that skin, flesh ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... his capability of enduring it. In the most audacious imaginings of his later life, in the most undisciplined acts of his early youth, were always present curious delicacies and reserves. There was always latent in him the real goodness of heart which would not allow him to trifle consciously with other lives. Work must also have been his safeguard when the habit of it had been acquired, and when imagination, once his master, ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... longing eyes round, there was no sticks save those carried by the boys, who, with flashing eyes, kept on darting in and aiming wherever they could get a chance. There was one fact, however, which Vane noticed, and which gave him a trifle of hope just when he was most despairing: his adversaries never once struck at his head, contenting themselves by belabouring his arms, back and legs, which promised to be rendered quite useless if the fight ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn
... your medal! Don't think of such a trifle as that!" she added, gently rebuking the selfish thought of ...
— Make or Break - or, The Rich Man's Daughter • Oliver Optic
... some other counties; but that consideration is all in your favour, for it deters Squire Hunston, the only man who could beat you, from starting; and to your resources a thousand pounds more or less are a trifle not worth discussing. You know how difficult it is nowadays to find a seat for a man of moderate opinions like yours and mine. Our county would exactly suit you. The constituency is so evenly divided between the urban and rural populations, that its representative must fairly consult the interests ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... She was evidently well used to traveling, for she would lift a tiny finger to summon the waiter, and gave him her orders with all the savoir-faire of an experienced diner-out. Perhaps her clear-toned treble voice was a trifle too high-pitched for the occasion, and would have been better had it been duly modulated, but her parents seemed proud of her conversational powers and allowed her to talk for the benefit of anybody within ear-shot. That she excited comment was manifest, for many ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... muttered, "the very thing—on this very road too. Whether the story is true or not, it is reasonable enough, although a trifle dramatic, but that is what is wanted to attract a girl like Nell. She don't care for me and never will, and all she wants is excitement and novelty, but if she thinks I saved her life or risked my own in protecting her, there might be a chance. In this story the chap had led rather ...
— Montezuma's Castle and Other Weird Tales • Charles B. Cory
... and she looked about as though to see that no eyes were watching them. But then, as the thoughts came rushing to her mind, she changed her purpose. "No," she said. "What is it but a trifle! It is nothing in itself. But I have bound myself to myself by certain promises, and you must not ask me to break them. You are as sweet to me as I can be to you, but there shall be no kissing till I know that I shall be your wife. Now take ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... one pressed the stirrups as the shoulders of the horse swung down and leaned a trifle forward when the shoulders rose again, the motion ceased to be jarring; for she was truly a matchless creature and gaited like one of those fabulous horses of old, sired by the swift western wind. In a little time a certain pride went beating through the veins of the doctor, the air ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand
... nestling at the foot of the mountain like a Swiss village. Here we change to the observation train drawn by a mountain-climbing traction engine, and begin the climb. The ascent is a gradual one, the steepest grade being a trifle over seven per cent, while the train twists and turns around two hundred and sixty curves from the base to the summit. We enter a forest of the giant redwoods, which, enormous in girth, and three hundred feet ...
— Byways Around San Francisco Bay • William E. Hutchinson
... fine modelling, and he had a pleasant face of the English blue-eyed type. Just then it was suffused with almost boyish merriment, and indeed an irresponsible gaiety was a salient characteristic of the man. One would have called him handsome, though his mouth was a trifle slack, and there was a certain assurance in his manner that just fell short of swagger. He was the kind of man one likes at first sight, but for all that not the kind his hard-bitten neighbours would have chosen to stand by them ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... on with toys of passion to the verge of acknowledging her love to a subject, and he discovered to be a married man!—Elizabeth to learn that she had been dallied with in such fashion, as a gay courtier might trifle with a country wench—we should then see, to our ruin, ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... quarter-inch space between lines. Crowded lines saddle much extra trouble upon copy-readers, compelling them to cut and paste many times to make necessary corrections. Exception to the rule against crowded lines is made only when one has a paragraph a trifle too long for a page. It is better to crowd the last lines of a page a trifle than to run two or three words of a paragraph over ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer
... the soldiers showed a generosity which Mr. Hastings neither showed nor would have suffered, if he could have prevented it. They agreed amongst themselves to give to these women three lacs of rupees, and some trifle more; and the rest was divided as a prey among the army. The sum found in the fort was about 238,000l., not the smallest part of which was in any way proved to be Cheyt Sing's property, or the property of any person but the unfortunate ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... this place, as the Moors had been utterly unable to cut down a small wooden cross fixed upon a stone, or even to remove it by the force of elephants. Likewise about this time a Portuguese soldier bought for a trifle from a jogue in Ceylon, a brown pebble about the size of an egg, on which the heavens where represented in several colours, and in the midst of them the image of the holy Virgin with the Saviour in her arms; this precious jewel fell into the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr
... into such a fruitful and healthful land, which we, with our numerous sins, still heaped up here daily, beyond measure, have not deserved. We are also in the highest degree beholden to the Indians, who not only have given up to us this good and fruitful country, and for a trifle yielded us the ownership, but also enrich us with their good and reciprocal trade, so that there is no one in New Netherland or who trades to New Netherland without obligation to them. Great is our disgrace now, and happy should we have been, had we acknowledged these ...
— Narrative of New Netherland • Various
... tremens from childhood, and hence his idees of things was a little irreg'ler. The streets don't lead anywheres in partic'ler, but everywheres in gin'ral. The city is bilt on a variety of perpendicler hills, each hill bein' a trifle wuss nor t'other one. Quebeck is full of stone walls, and arches, and citadels and things. It is said no foe could ever git into Quebeck, and I guess they couldn't. And I don't see what they'd WANT to get in ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 2 • Charles Farrar Browne
... such words again. Full well I know that the policy of statesmen rarely maintains truth and fidelity; that it excludes from the heart candour, charity, toleration. In secular affairs, this is, alas! only too true; but shall we trifle with God as we do with each other? Shall we be indifferent to our established faith, for the sake of which so many have sacrificed their lives? Shall we abandon it to these far-fetched, ...
— Egmont - A Tragedy In Five Acts • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... Sally Salisbury is now in Paris, and it is probable that her niece and nephew (my son) have joined her or committed the jewels to her good offices. I am ashamed to give your Ladyship such trouble about this trifle, yet beg your obliging enquiries in the Rue des Moineaux or where else your Lord may suggest. But by all means keep it from Horace Walpole. I want not his bitter tongue to lick my sores. 'Tis of course certain we cannot use the law, considering who is involved—a point Madam no ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... its arms. The bay itself is the tenderest blue-green, and on the rolling plain which borders it lies intense sunlight chequered with moving shadows which wander eastwards. The wind has shifted a trifle, and comes straight up the Channel from the ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford
... "Incur his displeasure—no trifle at any time, Geoffrey—and have Theophilus and Mr. Jones laughing at you. They can tell your uncle what story they please: and which is he most likely to believe, your statement ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie
... very unwise: in order to save a mere trifle in the purchase, there is a danger of losing some valuable article which it is intended to preserve. None but velvet taper corks should be used for liquors that are to be kept for any length of time; and when a bottle of ketchup or ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... smiled a trifle grimly. "I'm giving him just a little more rope, that is all, to see if he will help us secure the others. His every move is under strict surveillance—for him there is ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander
... stop on your way here to trifle with that child?" cried Gorgo wrathfully. "Pah! what ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... something of the gentlewoman in her: on my offering her money she refused to take it, saying that she did not want it, and it was with the utmost difficulty that I persuaded her to accept a trifle, with which, she said, she would buy ...
— Romano Lavo-Lil - Title: Romany Dictionary - Title: Gypsy Dictionary • George Borrow
... the last person in the world I expected to see when I left the steamer at Cedar Bluff landing to get ahead of the Yankee cotton-factor in St. Louis," said Rodney. "Tom had been over Cape Girardeau way on business, and got a trifle out of his reckoning when Mr. Westall and his party of Emergency men picked him up and brought him to the wood-cutters' camp. We slept there that night and came ...
— Rodney The Partisan • Harry Castlemon
... a happy, if a trifle hysterical little dinner party that evening at Mainsail Haul. Philippa was at times unusually silent, but Helen had expanded in the joy of her great happiness. Richard, shaved and with his hair cut, attired once more in the garb of civilisation, seemed ...
— The Zeppelin's Passenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... all set when Wiley re-entered the dining-room from which he had retreated once before in such haste, and Virginia was there and waiting, though her smile was a trifle uncertain. A great deal of water had flowed down the gulch since he had advised her to keep her stock, but the assayer at Vegas was worse than negligent—he had not reported on the piece of white ...
— Shadow Mountain • Dane Coolidge
... the Judge. "But that man is shrewd enough to keep himself out of the toils. He has a wholesale license to sell at Westport. He does not obligate himself to question his buyers. He may ask Big Bill a trifle more than anyone else, but that is no infringement of the law. I think there was no doubt in anyone's mind who was the instigator of this 'speak-easy' business at Italee; but he was shrewd enough to ...
— Elizabeth Hobart at Exeter Hall • Jean K. Baird
... late travels from Italy into England, that I might not trifle away my time in the rehearsal of old wives' fables, I thought it more pertinent to employ my thoughts in reflecting upon some past studies, or calling to remembrance several of those highly learned, as well as smartly ingenious, friends I had here ...
— In Praise of Folly - Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts • Desiderius Erasmus
... forty. One glance was enough to tell Curly the kind of man this was. The power of him found expression in the gray steel-chilled eyes that bored into the young outlaw. A child could have told he was not one to trifle with. ...
— Crooked Trails and Straight • William MacLeod Raine
... gay dresses of the brilliant assemblage illuminated the dusky old study; the rustling of silks, and the merry laughter, only a trifle subdued by the novelty of the circumstances, the eager chattering, the tripping sound of girlish feet darting in and out of every quaint nook and corner, the varied flow of sprightly conversation, scared the solemn quiet of the library. Looming down grimly from the shelves that lined the walls, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... ayah in the veranda or at the window, he calls out: 'Is anything wanted for Mem-Sahib or the babas? Tell the lady I have beautiful things to shew.' Away trips the ayah to her mistress, and good-naturedly, or perhaps—no, it shall be good-naturedly—lays the discovery before her that some trifle is wanted. The man is called in, and succeeds in disposing of some of his wares, ribbons, laces, or silks; and the ayah, besides having obliged the lady and the pedler, enjoys a small modicum of satisfaction ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 433 - Volume 17, New Series, April 17, 1852 • Various
... a good appetite myself," said the youngster; "but the one who has been here can do a trifle more than I, for he has eaten all ...
— Folk Tales Every Child Should Know • Various
... sir," said I, a trifle warmly, for the man's composure was irritating. "A disappearance would be more likely to do ...
— R. Holmes & Co. • John Kendrick Bangs
... desolate and lone. No more shall the merry rattle of the wheels, as the frisky four-in-hand careers in the morning mist, summon the village beauty from her toilet to the window-pane to catch a passing nod of gallantry; no more shall they loiter by the way to trifle with the pretty coquette in the bar, or light up another kind of flame for the fragrant Havannah fished from amongst the miscellaneous deposits in the depths of the box-coat pockets. True, the race were always a little fond of raillery, and ...
— Hints on Driving • C. S. Ward
... may see the young master and mistress of that yacht: a modest, attractive pair, possessors of one of the world's great fortunes, yet not nearly so elaborately dressed, nor so insistent upon their "position," as the Jumpkinson-Joneses. By raising the brim of her hat a trifle Mrs. H.S. Jumpkinson-Jones may see, sweeping in glorious circles above the yacht, the hydroplane which, when it left the edge of the beach a few minutes since, blew back with its propeller a stinging storm of sand, and caused skirts ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... circumstances, would be proud and happy to call you brother. Now, then, decide to try again. Clara shall not refuse you; she does not wish to do so; on the contrary, she loves you; but some of her oddness was in the ascendant to-night, and so it happened as it did. At any rate I can no longer trifle with my own safety, and have no authority or means to prevent Don Carlos from exercising unlimited power over my sister's actions. Good-night, senor, you can strike the gong when you wish for a servant and a light. I shall have ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... weight a trifle, as if to settle himself better for the desperate work that faced him, he remained just as before, on ...
— Canoe Mates in Canada - Three Boys Afloat on the Saskatchewan • St. George Rathborne
... hilly country, two or three steps sometimes measure all the interval between the basins of two rivers, whose mouths are miles apart. In the crisis of an illness the merest trifle will turn the scale between death and recovery. In a nice point of law and intricate procedure, the lawyer is aware that scarcely more than the thickness of the paper on which he writes lies between the case going for his client or for the opposite party. To rail at these fine technicalities ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... for what seems to us the philosophy of this matter. If we are right, it is no more than a first furrow in the crust of a soil, which hitherto the historians have been contented to leave in its barrenness. If they are conscientious enough not to trifle with the facts, as they look back on them from the easiness of modern Christianity which has ceased to demand any heavy effort of self-sacrifice, they either revile the superstition or pity the ignorance which made ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... "re-issue your Prospectus, my friend, and we will accelerate, with our best interest and influence, the publication of your volume. Let it be dedicated to the Hon. Tom Dashall and his Cousin Bob Tallyho. In the meanwhile, accept this trifle, as a complimentary douceur uniformly given on such occasions; and, amidst the varied scenes of Real Life in London, I shall frequently recur to the present as the most ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... to do good?" asked the man, a trifle sullenly. "Surely comfort, ease, health are the best a man can offer. Nature did not create you girls for a life of toil. You were made for love, for homage and adoration. Yet when one offers you these you turn to your nameless 'something' and, like the martyrs of old, ...
— For Gold or Soul? - The Story of a Great Department Store • Lurana W. Sheldon
... so—so surprising to me," went on the stranger. "It all occurred with such unexpected suddenness. One moment we are driving along as quietly as you please, only perhaps a trifle accentuated, and then—presto! we begin to go too fast, and the leather thong breaks. Then indeed there are things doing, as you say ...
— The Moving Picture Boys at Panama - Stirring Adventures Along the Great Canal • Victor Appleton
... D'Alembert was simple, open-hearted, unpresuming, and cheerful in society. Far from being subject to that absence of mind with which profound mathematicians are sometimes reproached, D'Alembert was present to every thing that was going forward—every trifle he enjoyed with the zest of youth, and the playfulness of childhood. Ormond confessed that he should never have guessed that he was a great mathematician and ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... Assembly, though it proceeded from the best motives, produced the worst effects. Duport, De Lameth, and Barnave well knew the troubles such a course must create. Of this they forewarned His Majesty, before any measure was laid before him for approval. They cautioned him not to trifle with the deputies. They assured him that half measures would only rouse suspicion. They enforced the necessity of uniform assentation, in order to lull the Mirabeau party, who were canvassing for a majority to set up D'ORLEANS, to ...
— The Secret Memoirs of Louis XV./XVI, Complete • Madame du Hausset, an "Unknown English Girl" and the Princess Lamballe
... "It sounds a trifle revolutionary," commented the bishop, with a smile. "But it appeals to me. Education is a matter than lies very near my heart. In fact, I had some thoughts of retiring from the Church and devoting myself to it. I feel, I don't know why, as if I ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... world-wide diocese Rests on the power of the keys; Our church, a trifle heterodox, We'll rest on a 'power ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... of this rubbish," said he, carelessly. "Poor Pierre's chattels have been reduced to mere firewood. If a trifle can be got for them, ...
— Jacques Bonneval • Anne Manning
... sitting in the kitchen, for the evening was a trifle cool. But the windows were open and there ...
— The Widow O'Callaghan's Boys • Gulielma Zollinger
... said, 'that must go; and, between Pleydell and Mac-Morlan, they'll cut down my claim on it to a trifle. My character—but if I get off with life and liberty I'll win money yet and varnish that over again. I knew not of the gauger's job until the rascal had done the deed, and, though I had some advantage by the contraband, that is no felony. But the kidnapping of the boy—there they touch me closer. ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... bringing him to light and clearing up this miserable misunderstanding. Having been Dolly Crewe's lover, he was still generous enough to wish to prove himself her friend; yes, and even her luckier lover's friend, though he winced a trifle at the thought. Accordingly, he left the house that night with his mind full of half-formed plans, ...
— Vagabondia - 1884 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... to gentlemen are of the most refined nature possible; they should be little articles not purchased, but deriving a priceless value as being the offspring of their gentle skill; a little picture from their pencil or a trifle from their needle. ...
— How To Behave: A Pocket Manual Of Republican Etiquette, And Guide To Correct Personal Habits • Samuel R Wells
... climate, and Dorothy Sambrooke had been exposed to it under exceptionally ripening circumstances. Slender, pale, with blue eyes a trifle tired from poring over the pages of books and trying to muddle into an understanding of life—such she had been the month before. But now the eyes were warm instead of tired, the cheeks were touched with the sun, and the body gave the first hint and promise of ...
— The House of Pride • Jack London
... the fifth moon—a feast day—when, on their way home, a yelling mob collected around them, shouting disrespectful names and even throwing things at them. True, they did it all in a spirit of playfulness, but a moment or a trifle might easily have turned mischief into malice, and, realizing this, Hart pulled up at one of the shops in the big street and asked the shopkeeper, a respectable greybeard, to tell the crowd not to ...
— Sir Robert Hart - The Romance of a Great Career, 2nd Edition • Juliet Bredon
... Cairns appeared ready for the street. He was a trifle drawn about the mouth, and irritated. Having been unable to work in the past hour, the day was amiss, for he hated a broken session and an allotment of space unfilled. Still, Cairns did not permit the other to ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... in May consider Pastor Lindal; his age was apparently over fifty, his features were clear cut and handsome, his eyes blue, and his hair had been a light-brown. There was an impression of probity about him that struck Hardy forcibly. His manner was a trifle awkward to Hardy's notion, but it was kindly. His daughter Helga was like her father. Her complexion was clear and her voice musical. Her manner was, Hardy thought, not refined. It was simple and straightforward, and to John Hardy she appeared to want the ladylike tone ...
— A Danish Parsonage • John Fulford Vicary
... great man is of necessity as ill-mannered and uneducated as any shepherd—for he has no leisure, and he is surrounded by a wall, which is his mountain-pen. Hearing of enormous landed proprietors of ten thousand acres and more, our philosopher deems this to be a trifle, because he has been accustomed to think of the whole earth; and when they sing the praises of family, and say that some one is a gentleman because he can show seven generations of wealthy ancestors, he thinks that their sentiments ...
— Theaetetus • Plato
... a trifle, sir,' Trombin said. 'We have not quite finished, and if you will join us we shall be delighted to begin again from the beginning. A clean cloth, Markos,' he went on at once, turning to the host, 'and the ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... sacrifice of life, the useless barbarity, and the really unnecessary needs of such mutilated humanity existing are fully considered, it would seem as if Christian nations might, with some reason, interfere in this horrible traffic, by the side of which ordinary slavery seems but a trifle. When we further consider that, in some instances, the child is also made mute by the excision of part of the tongue,—as mute or dumb eunuchs are less apt to enter into intrigues, and are therefore higher prized,—the barbarity, cruelty, ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... to give an Instance how incapable these Pieces are of raising the Passions. A mournful Dialogue, or Elegy is formed upon the Death of some Person. But if this Elegy raises not our Pity, 'tis a Trifle, and only a childish Copy of Verses. But in order to raise that most delightful Passion, should not the Reader be first prepossess'd in favour of the Party dead? Can I pity a Person because deceas'd, without knowing any thing of ...
— A Full Enquiry into the Nature of the Pastoral (1717) • Thomas Purney
... this has happened in the total absence of aim, object, intention, or design. Now that all this should have so happened, although not absolutely inconceivable, nor, therefore, absolutely impossible, is surely too incredible to be believed except in despair of some other hypothesis a trifle less preposterous. It is surely not worth while to set the doctrine of probabilities so completely at naught, for the sake of an explanation which avowedly leaves every difficulty unexplained, referring them all to causes not simply unknown but unconjecturable. What excuse, then, ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... upon the stairs. Presently he was back, with a lovely glossy skin in his hands. "The bear is for your father, mademoiselle," said he. "This little skin I have brought from America for you. It is but a trifle, and yet it may serve to make a pair of ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Quaker. "Though much to blame in this affair, thou too hast behaved nobly. Mayst thou be blessed in domestic life, and trifle no more with the feelings of poor girls; not even with those whom others ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child
... am wounded in fact, nor can words cure it: do not trifle, but speedily, once more I do repeat it, restore my Daughter as I brought her hither, or you shall hear from me in such a kind, as you ...
— The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher - Vol. 2 of 10: Introduction to The Elder Brother • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... Battle within battle must be continually recurring with varying success; and yet in the long run the forces are so nicely balanced, that the face of nature remains for a long time uniform, though assuredly the merest trifle would give the victory to one ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... language from Mr. Sergeant, the missionary there stationed. Something of this must have been morbid feeling, something from the want of energy consequent on the condition of his frame. For a man in confirmed decline such an entry in a journal as this is no trifle:—"December 20.—Rode to Stockbridge. Was very much fatigued with my journey, wherein I underwent great hardship; was much exposed, and very wet by falling into a river." Mr. Sergeant could hardly have ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... settled before the Eastern train had disgorged its contents at the Oakland mole. And even the immense florid mother of this lovely girl, with her own masses of snow white hair dressed in a manner becoming her age, and a severe gown of black Chantilly net, relieved by the merest trifle of jet, looked the reverse of the nondescript tourist. The girl wore white embroidered silk muslin and a thin gold chain with a small ruby pendant. She was rather above the average height, although ...
— The Avalanche • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... catch," he said. "I've been over here a number of times, trying to see him." His voice was a note too high, and Randerson wondered whether, without the evidence of his eyes, he would have suspected Masten. He decided that he would, and his smile was a trifle grim. ...
— The Range Boss • Charles Alden Seltzer
... made us all laugh. Our Captain hearing one of us roaring a trifle too loud, put his sword through ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 22, 1890 • Various
... understan' the'r ways," he observed sagely. "If ye let 'em alone an' don't go foolin' aroun' the'r ha'ntin'-groun' they'll never harm ye. But don't ye never trifle with no ha'nt, sonny. I knowed a feller't thought 'twuz smart to hector 'em an' said he wuzn't feared. Onct he throwed a ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume III. (of X.) • Various
... another trifle as an evidence that our intrusion into your affairs was not without some service to you, even if the service was as accidental as the intrusion. You will find a pair of boots in the corner of your closet. They were taken from the burglarious feet of Manuel, your peon, ...
— Snow-Bound at Eagle's • Bret Harte
... she was educated to sing at the opera, and married an Italian opera-singer, who is now dead; lodging in a model lodging-house at threepence a night, and being a penny short to-night, she tried this method, in hope of getting this penny. She takes in plain sewing when she can get any, and picks up a trifle about the street by means of her voice, which, she says, was once sweet, but has now been injured by the poorness of her living. She is a pale woman, with black eyes, Fanny says, and may have been pretty ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... has no possible comfort for us if our little is not our best. The widow's mites were her best, small though the money value was—she gave all she had. The poor woman's cup of cold water was all she could give. But if we give only a trifle out of our abundance, we are not doing ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... take it easy," said the explorer, his voice just a trifle shaken. "That was pretty bad for a minute, but ...
— The Rogue Elephant - The Boys' Big Game Series • Elliott Whitney
... me. I was anxious to know what construction she had put on the commission I had entrusted to her; and I hardly knew how to treat it myself, for if I allowed her to suppose that there was nothing but a trifle in question, she might, at some future time, allude to ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... cared little for individuals. He did not believe (as some one has said) that the history of mankind is the history of its great men. Great men with him were but larger atoms, obeying the same impulses with the rest, only perhaps a trifle more erratic. With them or without them, the course of things would have been much ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... matters I had facts to communicate; on the geological scheme of the early history of the globe there are only analogies to guide us, which different minds may apply and interpret in different ways; but I will not trifle with a long preliminary discourse. Astronomical deductions and actual measures by triangulation prove that the globe is an oblate spheroid flattened at the poles, and this form we know, by strict mathematical demonstrations, is ...
— Consolations in Travel - or, the Last Days of a Philosopher • Humphrey Davy
... and returned towards her bleak station, and waited and shivered again. It was a trifle, after all—a childish thing—looking out from a tower and waving a handkerchief. But her new friend had promised, and why should he tease her so? The effect of a blow is as proportionate to the texture of the object struck as to its own momentum; and she had ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... sorry for you, girl," cried Polly. "You're in a diseased frame of mind; you are in a fidget of work; you don't know the enjoyment of idleness, the luxury of laziness. You'll spoil your complexion; your hair will grow grey; no man will dare to trifle with such ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... effect was to set Vera into crying out at every one being so intolerably cross about such a trifle, Gillian ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... lent an unexpected charm to the almost severe features of the host. His usual expression was rather sad, and a trifle haughty. His forehead was broad and high, the forehead of a thinker and a student rather than that of a soldier; his eyes were of a deep, clear blue, looking directly at everything; his nose was straight and regular, and his beard and moustache were blond, slightly gray ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... two and one-half years old, and was caged in a large open den with four other bears of the same age. Of a European brown bear male, only a trifle larger than herself, she elected to be terror-stricken, as much so as ever a human child was in terror of every move of a brutal adult tormentor. Strangely enough, the cause of all this terror was wholly unconscious of it, and in the course of an observation lasting at least ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... last, and marriage by capture did not occur to him, who had spent so many years among savages, as a crime from which to shrink. Only he feared that the prospective captive, the Inkosazana-y-Zoola, was not one with whom it was safe to trifle. But his love was stronger than his fear. He thought that he would take ...
— The Ghost Kings • H. Rider Haggard
... the flatfish. There's a record of one halibut having been caught weighing a trifle over five hundred pounds. Usually a fish one-fifth of that ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... clouded a trifle, and he hesitated before he said, "I am not questioning your judgment, Captain, but you and I have camped out enough to know that a good camp-mate is about the scarcest article to be found. If we take in a stranger on this trip, which ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... sold all the tools but two or three sets; he also sold one of the now deserted cabins as old, lumber, together with its domestic wares; and made up his mind that he would buy, provisions with the trifle of money thus gained and continue his work alone. About the middle of the after noon he put on his roughest clothes and went to the tunnel. He lit a candle and groped his way in. Presently he heard the sound of a pick or a drill, and wondered, what it meant. A spark of light now appeared ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Dick, the jacket of which was just a trifle short; a pretty, simple dress for Marjorie; and a sailor suit ...
— Dick, Marjorie and Fidge - A Search for the Wonderful Dodo • G. E. Farrow
... begin with very little, sir. If the ball don't go to the top of the cliff I shall put a trifle more into the gun next time; it's better to make a mistake on ...
— The Bravest of the Brave - or, with Peterborough in Spain • G. A. Henty
... the passion and the art, of this wonderful composition, even the best remaining examples of mediaeval hymn-writing may look a little pale. It is possible for criticism, which is not hypercriticism, to object to the pathos of the Stabat, that it is a trifle luscious, to find fault with the rhyme-scheme of Jesu dulcis memoria, that it is a little faint and frittered; while, of course, those who do not like conceits and far-fetched interpretations can always quarrel with the substance of Adam of St Victor. ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... me to be resentful when I'm graciously willing to let you work for me. Still, I have been inclined to wonder how you were getting on with my estimable relatives and connections. One of them has, I hear, unbent a trifle towards you, but I would like to warn you not to presume on any small courtesy shown you by the ...
— Winston of the Prairie • Harold Bindloss
... actor that man is. Do you know, boys, up to this minute, I firmly believed that messenger was innocent—I have been sold like an ordinary fool," and Mr. Pinkerton looked at the tell-tale papers admiringly, for, although he felt a trifle chagrined at being taken in so nicely, he could not but pay tribute to the man who did it, for the man that could get the better of "Billy" Pinkerton, must be one of ...
— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton
... expresses to a certain floor and local beyond. Whether the fleet is made up of two or ten lifts, there is always a man to control them, a station-master of lifts who gives the word to the liftboys. To the Englishman he is a new phenomenon. He seems a trifle unnecessary [but he may be put there by law]; he is soon seen to be one of a multitude of men in America who "stand over" other men ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton
... trifle," he answered. "But I'm trying to tread it under. It's essential that I should keep cool. When you're arm in arm with Fortune, you're apt to lose your head. And then you're done. The jade'll give me my cues—I'm sure of it. But ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... amount to 160 tributes per man. They amount to a like number of pesos of eight reals, for the two additional reals are for the royal crown. And even on the eight reals so many charges are made that there is left but six or a trifle more. This is the wealth, and natural and proper commerce ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 27 of 55) • Various
... remember your story at the inquest. You will forgive me if, in company, I believe, with the majority who heard it, I find it a trifle improbable." ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... he resumed, with an entire change of voice. "To speak of this trifle is but a subterfuge of yours to prevent me from expressing my deep gratitude for your ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... that Marguerite found the time slipping by more pleasantly. It was for Percy that this semblance of supper was being got ready. Evidently Brogard had a certain amount of respect for the tall Englishman, as he seemed to take some trouble in making the place look a trifle less uninviting than ...
— The Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... manager to the effect that those of the critics worth bribing could not be bribed, and those willing to be bribed were not worth bribing. Still, there have been instances of efforts. A manager, now no more, once sent an expensive trifle at Christmas to one of us, who, embarrassed by it, indulged in a graceful but rather costly victory by sending a still more expensive trifle to the manager on his birthday, and this closed the incident. Into the nice question whether and how ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... express thundered into the station with a force which shook the platform. Instinctively the scattered groups of persons on the platform drew back a trifle as the first three coaches shot past. It was a long train and it did not take more than a second glance down its length to note that the last coach was quite different ...
— Marjorie Dean, College Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... filaments which are fastened to the ends of the wires passing through the glass tubes t and t1. Generally in bulbs made on this plan the globe L communicated with the tube T. For this purpose the ends of the small tubes t and t1 were just a trifle heated in the burner, merely to hold the wires, but not to interfere with the communication. The tube T, with the small tubes, wires through the same, and the refractory buttons m and m1, was first prepared, and then sealed ...
— Experiments with Alternate Currents of High Potential and High - Frequency • Nikola Tesla
... said, "for such an unceremonious entrance. I felt sure that you were in, but I am a trifle deaf, and I could not be sure whether or not the bell was ringing. So I ventured to use my own latch-key, with, as you are ...
— The Avenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Rainey escaped, a trifle embarrassed, and passed through the alley that went by the cook's domain into the main cabin. Tamada was at work, but turned a gleam of slanting eyes toward Rainey as they passed the open door. ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn
... I was wondering that you thought it worth while to excuse yourself for such a trifle as a rude word or two. I thought possibly, when I came out with you, that you ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... aware who first introduced into the organ a rank of soft-toned pipes purposely tuned a trifle sharp or flat to the normal pitch of the organ, so as to cause a beat or wave in the tone. Fifty years ago such stops were sparingly used and many organists condemned their employment altogether. Stops of the kind were hardly ever found in small organs and the largest ...
— The Recent Revolution in Organ Building - Being an Account of Modern Developments • George Laing Miller
... confidences of the confessional. But," he added, with a little anxious look, "I can tell you what it will do; it will either sweeten his whole nature more and more, or else make it more and more bitter, from this time forth. And that is no trifle to you or me; for whether for good or bad, in a large way or in a small way, he is going to ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... her mood was an habitual one. Perhaps she was a trifle gentler. He attributed that ...
— The Indian Lily and Other Stories • Hermann Sudermann
... ignorant, shiftless, and incompetent, and after carrying on his enterprise for "three quarters of a year, with at most only ninety subscribers," he sold out his failure to Franklin and Meredith "for a trifle." To them, or rather to Franklin, "it prov'd in a few years extremely profitable." Its original name, "The Universal Instructor in all Arts and Sciences, and Pennsylvania Gazette," was reduced by the amputation of the first clause, and, relieved from ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... let ut rest," sez I; an' thinkin' I'd been a trifle onpolite, I sez, "The tay's not quite sweet enough for my taste. Put your little finger in the cup, Judy. 'Twill ...
— Soldier Stories • Rudyard Kipling
... obliged to have her sent back to her father." Pecquius asked whether in his conscience the Secretary of State believed it right or reasonable to make war for such a cause. Villeroy replied by asking "whether even admitting the negative, the Ambassador thought it were wisely done for such a trifle, for a formality, to plunge into extremities and to turn all Christendom upside down." Pecquius, not considering honour a trifle or a formality, said that "for nothing in the world would his Highness ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... The other two prisoners were the German Dr. Schiller—a plucky old chap, who'd been a rebel and a conspirator and I don't know what all in his own country. He'd seen too much of that kind of thing to trouble himself over much about a trifle of this kind. The old woman was a family servant, who had been with them for years and years. She was a kind of worshipper of theirs, and was ready to live ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... your wife; if you cannot love her, you must with merciful deception make her believe that you do. You must show her when you return from business that you have thought of her; you must buy a bouquet, a toy, a trifle, to carry home to her. If you do these things, you will be rewarded; if not, you will ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... letter from "the Row,"— How mad I was when first I learnt it! They would not take my Book, and now I'd give a trifle to have burnt it. ...
— London Lyrics • Frederick Locker
... all I want you to say," answered Kitty with a profound sigh, "and now I'll go upstairs and slip off my bits of boots, for they are a trifle tight. Can you lend me a pair of your ...
— Wild Kitty • L. T. Meade
... sensibility, the little ephemeral and chance working of our nerves; and we are convinced that life there must be impossible or appalling, because we should feel too hot or too cold. It were much wiser to say to ourselves that it would need but a trifle, a few papillae more or less to our skin, the slightest modification of our eyes and ears, to turn the temperature, the silence and the darkness of space into a delicious spring-time, an unequalled music, a divine light. It were much more reasonable to persuade ourselves that the catastrophes which ...
— Death • Maurice Maeterlinck
... her heart, Jos, you rascal," said another. "Don't trifle with her affections, you ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... never heard the term "locooed" so he was not quite sure what Jeb meant. But he was thankful that he had life enough left even to suffer with the broken arms and legs; for a trifle like that was not to be scorned when he might have been done for completely even as he feared ...
— Polly and Eleanor • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... I know by the jaw,"—jogging up the stubble-field beside him, her fat little satchel rattling as she walked. Doctor Blecker, a trifle graver and more assured than when we saw him last, sheltered her with his overcoat from the wind, taking it off for that purpose by the stile. You could see that this woman was one of the few for whom he ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... diocese Rests on the power of the keys; Our church, a trifle heterodox, We'll rest on a ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... she not appear to comfort me? But haste, I will fly to her. I will clasp, I will lock her, in my arms. No, nothing, not all the powers on earth, shall ever part us more." "Sir, she is not in the house." "Not in the house," cried Damon starting, "Ha! say. I will not be cheated. On thy life do not trifle with ...
— Damon and Delia - A Tale • William Godwin
... of the world, who build upon the style of your neighbor's dress or equipage and trifle away God's precious moments in silly show and vain trumpery, go to the retreats at "Gladswood," follow Phillip Lawson in his daily rounds, and if you will not, like him, feel your heart expand and seek aspirations of a higher mould— a something which gives comfort each ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... legal redress from our landlord, or from the neighbours; there were too many of them; and if we had told our story,—how we had been robbed of four hundred darics and our clothes and rugs and everything, most people would only have thought we were making a fuss about a trifle. So we had to think what was to be done: here we were, absolutely destitute, in a foreign country. For my part, I thought I might as well put a sword through my ribs there and then, and have done with it, rather than endure the humiliation that might be forced upon ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... instructions to several officers. De Sylva renewed the signing of documents. Russo and he conversed in low tones. A buzz of talk broke out in the tent. Carmela felt that she had no part in this activity, that her mere presence was a positive hindrance to the work in hand. A trifle disappointed, yet not without a thrill of high resolve to create for herself an indispensable share in the movement of which her father was the central figure, she went out, unhitched her tired horse, and walked to ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... valleys converge at Santo Peak, so that there are important passes near its summits. One of my boys gave out here, and we left him to repose. The rest of the way was not difficult, but we were all very tired when we reached the top. There was another summit, a trifle higher, separated from the first by a long ridge, but we contented ourselves with the one we were on, especially as we could see absolutely nothing. I was much disappointed, as on a clear day the view of Santo and the whole archipelago must be wonderful. I deposited a bottle with a paper of statistics, ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... If you were human you'd be half divine, For when I've looked beyond the smoke, into your burning bowl In times of need You've been, indeed, The only comfort, sweetest solace, of my overflowing soul. We've been together nearly thirty years, old fellow! And now, you must admit, we're both a trifle mellow. We have had our share of joys and a deal of sorrows, And while we're only waiting for a few more to-morrows, Others will come, and others will go, And Time will gather what Youth will sow; But we together ...
— Pipe and Pouch - The Smoker's Own Book of Poetry • Various
... they went, repenting they have spent so much precious time to so little benefit! How sad is it to see men spend their precious time, in which they should work out their salvation, by labouring, as in the fire, to prove an uncertain and doubtful proposition, and to trifle away their time, in which they should make their calling and election sure, to make sure of an opinion which, when they have done all, they are not infallibly sure whether it be true or no; because all things necessary to salvation and church-communion are plainly laid down ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... said Colonel Archfield, bowing, "that I once incurred Mr. Holt's displeasure as a mischievous boy by throwing a stone which injured one of his poultry; but I cannot believe such a trifle would bias an honest man in a question of ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the lightning did not harm him how can this flash? I tell you no man has a right to trifle with you in this manner, and it is your duty to yourself and all of us to find out the truth. Some young rake may have bribed the black, and be personating him; and some day you may find yourself carried off you ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... on a well-designed gas valve operating mechanism is practically nil; and even if there was wear, the effect would be to cause the valve to open a trifle later and close sooner than it would otherwise, i.e., it would remain open a shorter time during each charging stroke. This in turn (other conditions remaining the same) would give us a weaker mixture; and although ...
— Gas and Oil Engines, Simply Explained - An Elementary Instruction Book for Amateurs and Engine Attendants • Walter C. Runciman
... the oarsman was pulling was such as a man pulls when, in answer to some emergency, he is putting forth his whole strength. But though the stroke was an earnest one, there was no apparent hurry in it; for it was long and evenly pulled, from dip to finish, and the recovery seemed a trifle leisurely done. The face of the trapper fairly shone with delight as he saw the boat and the occupants. Indeed, his happiness was too great to be enjoyed silently, and, in accordance with his habit when greatly interested, he broke ...
— How Deacon Tubman and Parson Whitney Kept New Year's - And Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray
... memorials to him on this subject, stating that I had replaced the worn-out furniture with new and superior articles; but this he wholly disregarded, compelling me to give up everything, even to the greatest trifle. It may be right to say that on his return the Emperor found his table covered with information respecting my conduct in Paris, though I had not held the smallest communication with any one in the capital, nor once entered it during ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... defence was hopeless and famine at hand, followed, ere long, the same example. Thus, in one brief campaign, was Egypt entirely rescued from the arms of France. But even that great advantage was a trifle, when compared with the stimulus afforded to national confidence at home, by this timely re-assertion of the character of the English army. At sea we had never feared an enemy; but the victories of Abercrombie ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... was filled that day with a devout admiration of Mr. Sefton, and he did not hesitate to proclaim it, bending covert glances at his daughter as he pronounced these praises. Mr. Sefton, he said, might differ a little in certain characteristics from the majority of the Southern people, he might be a trifle shrewder in financial affairs, but, after all, the world must come to that view, and hard-headed men such as he would be of great value when the new Southern Republic began its permanent establishment and its dealings ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... to retrieve?" he crowed offensively, boldly looking up into the other's face. "It seems you are yourself reluctant." And he laughed a trifle stridently, and looked about him ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini
... ground, and every one of the flock went right slap over me, all but one—poor Brindle. She never came home agin. Bear nabbed her, and tore her most ridiculous. He eat what he wanted, which was no trifle, I can tell you, and left the ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... characters more permanent than those which, cut deep in the hoary monuments of Egypt, have outlived teeming centuries of human history? Darkness may cover the page, but by a vivid and mysterious flash every letter is illuminated. That flash may be only some trifle, such as a note of ...
— Parish Papers • Norman Macleod
... with our numerous sins, still heaped up here daily, beyond measure, have not deserved. We are also in the highest degree beholden to the Indians, who not only have given up to us this good and fruitful country, and for a trifle yielded us the ownership, but also enrich us with their good and reciprocal trade, so that there is no one in New Netherland or who trades to New Netherland without obligation to them. Great is our disgrace now, and happy should we have been, had we acknowledged ...
— Narrative of New Netherland • Various
... entirely. We were contracted before my father's death. That, and some consequent embarrassments, have delayed what I know to be my Faulkland's most ardent wish. He is too generous to trifle on such a point:—and for his character, you wrong him there, too. No, Lydia, he is too proud, too noble to be jealous; if he is captious, 'tis without dissembling; if fretful, without rudeness. Unused to the fopperies of love, he is negligent of the little ...
— The Rivals - A Comedy • Richard Brinsley Sheridan
... Hugh Crombie, in a meditative tone. "Of a certainty, my conscience has grown unreasonably tender within the last two years. This one small sin, if I were to aid in it, would add but a trifle to the sum of mine. But then ...
— Fanshawe • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... received for it more than it was really worth. More than a year passed and Siegfried had become his own master, when he read in the newspapers in another place that a watch was to be made the subject of a lottery. He took a ticket, which cost a mere trifle, and won—the same gold watch set with brilliants which he had sold. Not long afterwards he exchanged this watch for a valuable ring. He held office for a short time under the Prince of G——, and when he retired ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... ghost—this old rummy who can't sleep in his grave of nights? Ha, ha! I'm not afraid of a little trifle like ...
— The Ghost Breaker - A Novel Based Upon the Play • Charles Goddard
... Spring their old haunts are in a more or less dilapidated condition according to the number of successful visits the German aviators have chosen to pay us during the Winter, and I fancy that this upsets them a trifle. For hundreds of generations they have been accustomed to nest in the pinions of certain roofs, to locate in a determined chimney, and it is a most amusing sight to see them cluster about a ruined spot and discuss the ...
— With Those Who Wait • Frances Wilson Huard
... much in those days of Caribou. The Colonel had gradually slipped into the position of Boss of the camp. The Trio were still just a trifle afraid of him, and he, on his side, never pressed a dangerous ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... "It's nothing. I—I turned the micrometer screw a trifle hard. I got us back to five years ago, when we were living here with Tode. That's just a ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... as the market would be spoiled for the sale of their building lots, but they would be rightly served for asking a monopoly price to respectable new-comers, who ought to be enabled to obtain a town allotment for a trifle of the Government. ...
— A Source Book Of Australian History • Compiled by Gwendolen H. Swinburne
... was apparently the only reason for de Son's failure, for his principles were distinctly sound, and he was certainly the first inventor of the mechanically propelled semi-submarine boat. After her failure de Son exhibited her for a trifle to any casual passer-by. ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... babe she wishes only one blessing more, to have her dear Doady there with her to share her joy, to lay in his arms that mite of God's clay, the fruit of their lawful embraces. He is older now (you and I may whisper it) and a trifle stooped in the shoulders yet in the whirligig of years a grave dignity has come to the conscientious second accountant of the Ulster bank, College Green branch. O Doady, loved one of old, faithful lifemate now, it may never be again, that faroff time ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... listener, was not gazing out over the prairie. The object at which he was looking was very near; so near that he had leaned a trifle back the better to see, to watch. He shifted now until his weight rested on his elbow, his face on ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge
... things in heaven and earth—" said Mr. Gryce. "And we know so little we may well believe a trifle more." ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... Michiela; Giulio for Leonardo; Carlo for Cupid. Take the Chief for the audience. Take him for a frivolous public. Ah, my Pippo!" (Agostino laughed aside to him). "Let us lead off with a lighter piece; a trifle-tra-la-la! and then let the frisky piccolo be drowned in deep organ notes, as on some occasions in history the people overrun certain puling characters. But that, I confess, is an illustration altogether out of place, and I'll simply jot ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... "He's a trifle unideal, mother; a bit different, you must admit," Nancy laughed. "To begin with, he has a ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... you, sir! It is inhuman To trifle with a father's anguish thus. Although this wretched man had forfeited Both life and limb for such a slight offence, Already has he suffer'd tenfold death. Send him away uninjured to his home; He'll know thee well ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... I fear your late commended friend Is little less. Come, sirs, 'tis now no time To trifle with our safety. Where's ...
— Venice Preserved - A Tragedy • Thomas Otway
... with a dozen fellows. Results rather alarming, as they all are collapsed already in hammocks, and one fainted on deck. It certainly is no trifle, and I shall watch their progress carefully. I can't be done myself for some days, as I was vaccinated two days ago (after the first unsuccessful attempt), in company with Williams. We went to the doctor's cabin on the upper ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers
... from William Gooding, Esq., an eminent engineer, which I regret I have not space to print in full, I learn that the length of the present canal, from the lake to the River Illinois, is 101 miles, with a total descent of a trifle more than 145 feet, and that it is proposed to enlarge this channel to the width of one hundred and sixty feet, with a minimum depth of seven, and to create a slack-water navigation in the Illinois by the construction of five dams, one of which ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... contained important additions. First the Dedication to the Queen, then 'Edwin Morris,' the fragment of 'The Eagle,' and the stanzas, "Come not when I am dead," first printed in 'The Keepsake' for 1851, under the title of 'Stanzas.' In this edition the absurd trifle 'The Skipping Rope' was excised and finally cancelled. In the eighth edition, 1853, 'The Sea-Fairies,' though greatly altered, was included from the poems of 1830, and the poem 'To E. L. on his Travels in Greece' was added. This edition, the ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... can cough any trifle on it up, Pip, I'd recommend you to do it," said Joe, all aghast. "Manners is manners, but still your elth's ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... I tells him, puttin' on my hat. "I hate to cop a sucker bet like this, but maybe losin' it will reduce the size of your head a trifle and do you good!" ...
— Alex the Great • H. C. Witwer
... Sattin has had power to temp me in the shape of van Ditton, the young 'squire's wally de shamble; but by God's grease he did not purvail — I thoft as how, there was no arm in going to a play at Newcastle, with my hair dressed in the Parish fashion; and as for the trifle of paint, he said as how my complexion wanted touch, and so I let him put it on with a little Spanish owl; but a mischievous mob of colliers, and such promiscous ribble rabble, that could bare no smut but their own, attacked us ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... old slave mothers, who, after having been worn out under the yoke, were frequently either offered for sale for a trifle, turned off to die, or compelled to eke out their existence ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... determined to honor me by showing me some fine diamonds on her fingers, repeatedly taking off no fewer than three gloves, which were worn one over the other . . . . This lady's bodice was of yellow satin, richly embroidered, her petticoat—[It is a trifle in human progress, perhaps scarcely worth noting, that the "round gown," that is, an entire skirt, not open in front and parting to show the under petticoat, did not come into fashion till near the close ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... certainly a little untrustworthy," said Holmes. "It will require some checking and you have little time to check it. Your admiral may find the new guns rather larger than he expects, and the cruisers perhaps a trifle faster." ...
— His Last Bow - An Epilogue of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... California,—Y., born to millions, crazed by too much plum-cake, (the boys said,) dogged, explosive,—made a Polyphemus of my weak-eyed schoolmaster, by a vicious flirt with a stick,—(the multi-millonnaires sent him a trifle, it was said, to buy another eye with; but boys are jealous of rich folks, and I don't doubt the good people made him easy for ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... to the beach, by slanting passages cut in the rocks for that purpose, and a scene of blood and death ensues too horrible for description. Thus are sent prematurely to their graves, many poor fellows, who, had brandy been a trifle cheaper, might have lived bright ornaments of a world ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 384, Saturday, August 8, 1829. • Various
... can guess, within a trifle, what that leads unto. I very much disapprove of it, whatever it may be. And then? and then? Prithee go on: I am inflamed with a miraculous zeal to ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... startled at this announcement, losing a trifle of his beaming smile. "He is not wounded, ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... metal, weighing some hundreds of pounds and capable of bearing some thousands of pounds with it in its flight. By producing, with the aid of the electrical generator contained in this car, an enormous charge of electricity, Mr. Edison was able to counterbalance, and a trifle more than counterbalance, the attraction of the earth, and thus cause the car to fly off from the earth as an electrified pithball ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putnam Serviss
... of locomotion marks it as an idiosyncratic, exceptional, fantastic creature, having no fellow, that I know of, in the insect world. Though endowed with legs—a trifle short, it is true, but after all as good as those of a host of other larvae—it never uses them for walking. It progresses on its back, always on its back, never otherwise. By means of wriggling movements and the purchase afforded by the dorsal bristles, ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... want and misery, they appear pleased with any trifle that may fall into their hands, and on a bitter, windy day I have seen grown-up beggars on a waste patch flying a kite and enjoying the pastime with a gusto denied to more blase pursuers of this ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready
... geometry, learning or teaching it," said Anne Shirley, a trifle vindictively, as she thumped a somewhat battered volume of Euclid into a big chest of books, banged the lid in triumph, and sat down upon it, looking at Diana Wright across the Green Gables garret, with gray eyes that ...
— Anne's House of Dreams • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... the four seemed to be to look at their watches and to remark that the doctor's was a trifle fast, and to wonder if half-past seven would be a more suitable hour for the boys, and to wonder what ...
— Ester Ried Yet Speaking • Isabella Alden
... is an intelligent man, who believes that 'trifles make perfection and that perfection is no trifle,'" answered Madame Bretton. "He has raised some very fine silk and made a good profit by selling it. But every franc of the money was earned—it ...
— The Story of Silk • Sara Ware Bassett
... had yesterday at your brother's. [Footnote: Recently married to Honora Edgeworth.] Honora, dear Honora, was so nice and kind, nobody but ourselves. At second course appeared the essential trifle, [Footnote: A trifle always appeared on Maria Edgeworth's birthday, because once on New Year's Day when a trifle had been ordered and the dish was placed on the table there was found under the flowers, not cake and cream, ...
— The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... until they opened the line of coast beyond the headland, and then kept her course again. There was a trifle more wind as the sun rose higher, and the yacht went fully a knot faster through the water. In less than two hours the brigantine was abreast of the headland. Presently ...
— The Queen's Cup • G. A. Henty
... always pleased with those who partake pleasure with them. But after a man has brought himself to relinquish the great personal pleasure which arises from drinking wine, any other consideration is a trifle. To please others by drinking wine, is something only, if there be nothing against it. I should, however, be ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... small literary marks in the Hebrew script; for present purposes we may regard them as equivalent to the dot of an "i" or the cross of a "t"; with the first, the jot, our English word "iota," signifying a trifle, is related. Not even the least commandment could be violated without penalty; but the disciples were admonished to take heed that their keeping of the commandments was not after the manner of the scribes and Pharisees, ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... drawing his cloak about him, we rather think of him as a merry wood-chopper, and warm-blooded youth, as blithe as summer. The unexplored grandeur of the storm keeps up the spirits of the traveller. It does not trifle with us, but has a sweet earnestness. In winter we lead a more inward life. Our hearts are warm and cheery, like cottages under drifts, whose windows and doors are half concealed, but from whose chimneys the smoke cheerfully ascends. The imprisoning drifts increase the sense of comfort which the ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... a few ordinary drunks, until this fellow Doherty was brought in. I thought I recognised him, and when I heard his name I was certain of my man. He hadn't done anything very bad—assaulted a tram-conductor, or some such trifle—and would have got off with a fine. However, a military man turned up and claimed him as a deserter. His real name, it appears, is Johnston. He deserted six weeks ago from ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... outrages at Pallas on the Tipperary border, I determined to drive over and visit the scene of action. For this country the journey was a short one; fifteen or sixteen miles out and in on an outside car is thought a mere trifle in Limerick. The trip occupied the entire day nevertheless. As we drove out of Limerick past the great pig-slaughtering and curing houses, we soon became aware that an immense convergence of the farming ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker
... great masses of rock to the rolls, and will also enable the reader to form an idea of the rapidity of the breaking operation, when it is stated that a boulder of the size represented would be reduced by the giant rolls to pieces a trifle larger than a man's ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... procure bail, which I would like to do now. Then, there was danger in leaving the money where it was secreted—in the old trunk in the garret—as Floyd might want to clear the garret out, and I had several times seen him sell unclaimed baggage. My old trunk might be sold for a trifle and some one take it home and find it ...
— The Expressman and the Detective • Allan Pinkerton
... give an Instance how incapable these Pieces are of raising the Passions. A mournful Dialogue, or Elegy is formed upon the Death of some Person. But if this Elegy raises not our Pity, 'tis a Trifle, and only a childish Copy of Verses. But in order to raise that most delightful Passion, should not the Reader be first prepossess'd in favour of the Party dead? Can I pity a Person because deceas'd, without knowing any thing of his ...
— A Full Enquiry into the Nature of the Pastoral (1717) • Thomas Purney
... Templar—of which he is more ashamed than many men would be of the meanest sins. For sometimes the camera has its mordant moods, and amazes you by its saturnine estimate of your merits. This man was perhaps a little out of harmony with the garments of chivalry, and a trifle complacent and vain at the time. But the photograph of him is so cynical and contemptuous, so merciless in its exposure of his element of foolishness, that we may almost fancy the spook of Carlyle had got mixed up with the chemicals upon the film. Yet it never really dawned upon him until ...
— Select Conversations with an Uncle • H. G. Wells
... was an unusually heavy, rich contralto. That she was not an accomplished artiste he knew. He did not haunt opera houses for naught, and, like all fat men who wear red ties in the forenoon, he was a trifle dogmatic in his criticism. The young woman had the making of an opera singer. What a Fricka, Brangaene, Ortrud, Sieglinde, Erda, this clever girl might become! She was musical, she was dramatic in temperament—he let his imagination run away with him. She only sang ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... go upon the ferry-boat, Ki Pak advised him to dismount and lead his pony across the plank which covered the watery space between the bank of the river and the boat. But the cook was an obstinate Korean, as well as a trifle lazy, and refused to get down, thinking he could safely drive his beast across the gang-plank. Ordinarily this would have been possible, but on this particular occasion, just as the pony stepped upon the ...
— Our Little Korean Cousin • H. Lee M. Pike
... of difference in the same color. For example, in the plain center of a rug, several tones representing shades of the same color will give the effect of a play of light on a silky surface, which is very beautiful. By using material that has been dyed a trifle darker at one end of the rug, and working in gradually lighter tones, the result is surprisingly effective. To do this, each three or four yards should be dyed with these slight differences of tone; then when within thirty strips of the end of one color (more or less, according to the ...
— Hand-Loom Weaving - A Manual for School and Home • Mattie Phipps Todd
... the poop, that the above-named difficulty was stated by Glenarvan. Paganel made no reply, but went and fetched the document. After perusing it, he still remained silent, simply shrugging his shoulders, as if ashamed of troubling himself about such a trifle. ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... her a trifle larger. But she had the winning charm of all delicate and mignonnes women; and her figure was of exquisite roundness, and her dimpled hands were those of ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau
... be inspired by such frenzied fanaticism as exists among the Mormons in Utah. This is the first rebellion which has existed in our Territories, and humanity itself requires that we should put it down in such a manner that it shall be the last. To trifle with it would be to encourage it and to render it formidable. We ought to go there with such an imposing force as to convince these deluded people that resistance would be vain, and thus spare the effusion of blood. We can in this manner best convince them that we ...
— State of the Union Addresses of James Buchanan • James Buchanan
... leisure is often filled. In a day's routine, where men work together, harmonious relations are necessary; yet what bickerings, contentions, animosities fill many a day over points never worth a thought. You will see two men squabble like cats for the veriest trifle, and then go through days like children, without a word. You will see something similar in social life among men and women equally—petty jealousies, personalities, slanderings, mean little stories of no great consequence in themselves, except in the ...
— Principles of Freedom • Terence J. MacSwiney
... delightful little laugh of hers, presumably at the accident with the knife. Whether or no she "minded" did not appear, only she handed her handkerchief, a costly, last-fringed trifle, to Alan to wipe the gravy off his shirt, which he took thinking it was a napkin, and as she did so, touched his hand with a little caressing movement of her fingers. Whether this was done by chance or on purpose did not appear either. At least it made Alan feel extremely ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard
... can best be expressed as "want of confidence" in the chief of the Ordnance Department of the army on the part of committees of Congress. From this it resulted that no appropriations were made for several years for any new armament, and hence none for fortifications. Thus by a trifle were the wheels of a great government blocked for a long time! Yet that government still survives! Finally, in the year 1888 an act was passed creating a Board of Ordnance and Fortifications, of which the commanding general of the army ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... estancia near Las Vacas large numbers of mares are weekly slaughtered for the sake of their hides, although worth only five paper dollars, or about half a crown apiece. It seems at first strange that it can answer to kill mares for such a trifle; but as it is thought ridiculous in this country ever to break in or ride a mare, they are of no value except for breeding. The only thing for which I ever saw mares used, was to tread out wheat from the ear, for which purpose ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... so loud,' said the quiet lady; but Nuttie only wriggled her shoulders, though her voice was a trifle lowered. 'If it were the British Museum ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... excellent idea. He sat down at the table and counted the crosses. There were fourteen of them. The different lodes were laid off in mathematically exact rectangles, running in many directions. A few joined one another, but most lay isolated. Their relative positions were a trifle confusing at first, but, after a little earnest study, Bennington thought he understood them. He could start with the Holy Smoke, just outside the door. The John Logan lay beyond, at an obtuse angle. Then a jump of a hundred yards or so to the southwest ...
— The Claim Jumpers • Stewart Edward White
... nothing more—shouldn't have noticed so much, in fact, if the whole thing hadn't looked a trifle curious. Nervous, pallid Jew with a black case—as though he thought it was dynamite and might go off at any moment—closed brougham, blinds drawn, Jew skipped in and banged the door, but brougham didn't move; and I fancied—perhaps only fancied—that I saw ...
— The Red Triangle - Being Some Further Chronicles of Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison
... been over for herself many years since. Her interest now was in her sons' possible marriages, and it was a little painful to her that Henrietta should be so much excited about what had never after all been more than a potential love affair. To tell the truth, she thought it a trifle petty and not worthy the dignity of one on the verge of old age. She wanted to be sympathetic, and she was too kind to say anything that would wound, but Henrietta could see that Evelyn did not enter into ...
— The Third Miss Symons • Flora Macdonald Mayor
... made to something, but this you are not to know of, as she intends to present it to you.... I am happy to hear of your father's being better pleased as to money matters; it will come at last; don't let that trifle disturb you. Adieu, Monsieur. J'ai l'honneur d'etre votre tres ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... between us had been one of our neighbors. Kindly receive my book with the same indulgent smile, without seeking therein a meaning either good or bad, in the same spirit in which you would receive some quaint bit of pottery, some grotesquely carved ivory idol, or some fantastic trifle brought to you from this singular fatherland of ...
— Madame Chrysantheme Complete • Pierre Loti
... Grahame laid it to his art of winning a father-in-law. Mona found the explanation simply in the marriage, which to her, from the making of the trousseau to the christening of the boy, had been wonderful enough to have changed the face of the earth. The delicate face, a trifle fuller, had increased in dignity. Her hair flamed more glorious than ever. As a young matron she patronized Honora now ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... change in the old man's bearing. There was not a sneaky bone in the major's body—he walked as he thought and as he talked, in straight lines; but before he turned the corner he glanced up and down the empty sidewalk in a quick, furtive fashion, and after he had swung into the side street a trifle of the steam seemed gone from his stiff-spined, hard-heeled gait. It ceased to be a strut; it ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... that this part of the continent was not much wider than Mexico, and accordingly these colonies had received the royal permission to extend from sea to sea. The existence of a foreign colony of Dutchmen in the neighbourhood was a trifle about which these documents did not trouble themselves; but when Charles II. conquered this colony and bestowed it upon his brother, the province of New York became a stubborn fact, which could not be disregarded. Massachusetts and Connecticut ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... into the housekeeper of Sigmundskron, was busy with the preparations for the christening. A year of uninterrupted prosperity had made her a trifle more sleek than before, and though she still affected a Spartan simplicity of dress, her frock was made of better materials than formerly, and her cap was adorned with black ribbands ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... connecting separate skirt and waist to using a conspicuous pin. This is almost too trivial a detail to discourse upon, but it is as true that details make dress as it is that "trifles make life"—and neither life nor dress is a trifle. ...
— What Dress Makes of Us • Dorothy Quigley
... pickpocket's hand, always at work. Nothing escapes him. He is constantly collecting material, gathering-up glances, gestures, intentions, everything that goes on in his presence—the slightest look, the least act, the merest trifle." De Maupassant was himself a millionth man, ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... passed against the Press were the most irritating of all. The Press had become a power which it was dangerous to trifle with,—the one thing in modern times which affords the greatest protection to liberty, which is most hated by despots and valued by enlightened minds. A universal clamor was raised against this return to barbarism, this extinction of light in favor of darkness, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord
... knows his people," nodded the sergeant, proudly; "it was, in fact, but a trifle—a brown devil brandished his yataghan at the captain, and I cut off his hand to prevent the execution of his plan. Now, the ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume I (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... begged Gneisenau; "do not trifle with your dear eyes, destined to see still many beautiful things, and gladden the world by their heroic glances! What can a triumph of a few hours' duration be to you to whom every day will be a triumph, and ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... notice of Georgie. The schoolmaster's well contint with Georgie. He takes to the Irish like a duck to water. The master do be sayin' he's better at the language nor them that should be spakin' it be rights. He'll have him doin' a trifle o' poetry in it ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan
... motor-cars waited in front of their ancient door, and Edward Henry's hired electric vehicle was diminished to a trifle. ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... fixed value to each beat, and would consequently have acquired an invariable standard whereby he might estimate short intervals. If he found that his instrument had made exactly 86,400 beats at the end of a mean solar day, and knew that the length of its rod was a trifle more than 39 inches, he would be aware that each beat of such a pendulum might always be taken as the measure of a second. The length of the rod of a pendulum which beats exact seconds in London ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 457 - Volume 18, New Series, October 2, 1852 • Various
... "colourable pretence" for being the daughter of so blackened a character as is her father Amonasro, played as a villain of the deepest dye by M. DEVOYOD. When the celebrated march was heard, the players didn't seem particularly strong in trumps, and the trumpets giving a somewhat "uncertain sound,"—a trifle husky, as if they'd caught cold,—somewhat marred the usually thrilling effect. Gorgeous scene; and RAVELLI the Reliable as Radames quite the success of the evening. Mlle. GUERCIA as Amneris seemed to have made up after an old steel plate in a bygone Book of Beauty. Where are those ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, July 25, 1891 • Various
... sins, still heaped up here daily, beyond measure, have not deserved. We are also in the highest degree beholden to the Indians, who not only have given up to us this good and fruitful country, and for a trifle yielded us the ownership, but also enrich us with their good and reciprocal trade, so that there is no one in New Netherland or who trades to New Netherland without obligation to them. Great is our disgrace now, and happy should we have been, had ...
— Narrative of New Netherland • Various
... quoted, the principal item was naturally for casts. The cost of these, including packing and transportation, but not setting-up in the Museum, was $13,968.68, making an average of a trifle less than $62 for each number in the catalogue. We ought to say here, however, that an average is a dangerous guide in a matter of this kind, owing to the enormous difference in the size and price of casts, as well as in the ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, No. 733, January 11, 1890 • Various
... allowed by law to murder their wives. Indeed, the law forbids them to beat them; but for this trifle, husbands frequently escape with an "admonition." Yet, though the letter of the law is explicit, they must stop short of killing their victims. There is a case on record, within a few years back and in a British province, where a man beat his wife ...
— Woman: Man's Equal • Thomas Webster
... fatigue, hunger, and the loss and ruin of their property. Their gratitude was deep indeed at this wholly unexpected recovery of a large portion of their herds, and they started the next morning, mounted on some ponies they had picked up for a trifle, to drive them down ...
— With Buller in Natal - A Born Leader • G. A. Henty
... other's hand without further speech, and went on together awhile, till she glanced at him with furtive solicitude. "I arrived at Alfredston station last night, as you asked me to, and there was nobody to meet me! But I reached Marygreen alone, and they told me Aunt was a trifle better. I sat up with her, and as you did not come all night I was frightened about you—I thought that perhaps, when you found yourself back in the old city, you were upset at—at thinking I was—married, and not there as I used to be; and that you ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... off, if not, I should give it up; but it so fell out that they took the nearest way to meet us there, without writing us word, and it would have been a great disappointment had I not been there. I should not have written so much about a seeming trifle but to show the necessity of firmness in doing what is pointed out, unless ...
— Memoir and Diary of John Yeardley, Minister of the Gospel • John Yeardley
... luncheon and this dinner square the Johnstown pinching, perhaps a trifle more. What I wanted to say was that it struck me as worth comment that after you ceased being Police Commissioner, you never again talked of the impoverished boyhood of America. And yet you were a very ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow
... said, turning his horse and taking her reins from her poor stiff fingers, and, though the words were rough, his voice was strangely gentle. "'Tis not thy fault that things have fallen out thus, and if I be a trifle angered, in good faith it is not with thee. Come," and, as he spoke, he stooped down and lifted her bodily from her saddle, and swung her up in front of him on his great black horse. "Leave that stupid ...
— Tales From Scottish Ballads • Elizabeth W. Grierson
... that they got out at Euston Square she seemed a trifle bewildered, and could only do implicitly as her husband bade her—clinging to his hand, for the most part, as if to make sure of guidance. She did indeed glance somewhat nervously at the hansom into which Lavender ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... bagatella, bagata, a trifle), primarily a thing of trifling importance. The name, though French, is given to a game which is probably of English origin, though its connexion with the shovel-board of Cotton's Complete Gamester is very doubtful. Strutt does not mention it. The ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... have had some opportunity of knowing how they will be spent. There are exceptions to this, as to every general rule, which a person of discretion can determine. But the practice, so common among benevolent persons, of giving, at least a trifle, to all who ask, lest, perchance, they may turn away some, who are really sufferers, is one, which causes more sin ...
— A Treatise on Domestic Economy - For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School • Catherine Esther Beecher
... would never have been a beauty, but groomed up he would have made a very passable appearance amongst other men, although the scar near his mouth, and another similar emblem of roughness over the opposite eye, would have made him a trifle remarkable. ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... her the way people said: "Prescott? Oh yes—he was in Cuba, wasn't he?" and then smiled a little, perhaps shrugged a trifle, and added: ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell
... himself. He had not the slightest idea of working for any such trifle, but he did not care to ...
— Facing the World • Horatio Alger
... the water, had it fast in his claws. Then off he went, the younger one in pursuit. They passed out of sight behind the trees of an island, one close upon the other, and I do not know how the controversy ended; but I would have wagered a trifle on the old white-head, the bird ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... she said. "That would be beyond the price. Show her that black challis dress with the little dots. The skirt will be a trifle too long and the waist too large, but it can easily be made to fit her, besides we have nothing ...
— Nobody's Girl - (En Famille) • Hector Malot
... through the square farmyard; (Butter and eggs and a pound of cheese) His last brew of ale was a trifle hard— The connection of which ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... not a little discourteous I think," she said, "leaving her guests and motoring through the fog to the country. I sometimes think Constance Dex is a trifle mad." ...
— The Secret House • Edgar Wallace
... especially from a very interesting private letter from William Gooding, Esq., an eminent engineer, which I regret I have not space to print in full, I learn that the length of the present canal, from the lake to the River Illinois, is 101 miles, with a total descent of a trifle more than 145 feet, and that it is proposed to enlarge this channel to the width of one hundred and sixty feet, with a minimum depth of seven, and to create a slack-water navigation in the Illinois by the construction of five dams, one of which is already ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... days he had been fighting the desert; and in the serene calm of his eyes was the identical indomitability that had been in them when he had set forth. As he peered westward the strong lines around his mouth relaxed, his lips opened a trifle, and a mirthless smile wreathed them. He patted the shoulder of the black horse, and the dead dust ballooned from the animal's ...
— 'Drag' Harlan • Charles Alden Seltzer
... Procter's friend, John Forster, the biographer of Goldsmith and Dickens, in his pleasant rooms, No. 58 Lincoln's Inn Fields. He was then in his prime, and looked brimful of energy. His age might have been forty, or a trifle onward from that mile-stone, and his whole manner announced a determination to assert that nobody need prompt him. His voice rang loud and clear, up stairs and down, everywhere throughout his premises. When he walked over the uncarpeted floor, ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... door, which she had been holding open, and advanced into the room. She wore a dress of light hue, and had some flowers in her girdle. The past year had added a trifle to her stature; it could not add to her natural grace, but her manner of entering showed that diffidence had been overcome by habit. There was very little now to distinguish her from the young lady who has ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... people said when they built the Tower of Babel. But the builders of the Tower of Babel were quite modest and domestic people, like mice, compared with old Aladdin. They only wanted a tower that would reach heaven— a mere trifle. He wanted a tower that would pass heaven and rise above it, and go on rising for ever and ever. And Allah cast him down to earth with a thunderbolt, which sank into the earth, boring a hole deeper and deeper, till ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton
... you have a lusty and well complexion'd fellow That does rare tricks; my Sister and my self here, Would trifle out an hour ...
— Beaumont & Fletcher's Works (1 of 10) - The Custom of the Country • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... Macedonians till late in the year; and then, too, had not set their hands properly to the war, but had kept skirmishing and scouting here and there for passes and provisions, and never came to close fighting with Philip. He resolved not to trifle away a year, as they had done, at home in ostentation of the honor, and in domestic administration, and only then to join the army, with the pitiful hope of protracting the term of office through a second year, acting as consul in the first, and as general in the latter. He was, moreover, ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... I thought you were still in Aix-les-Bains!" cried Rayne, much surprised, and yet a trifle excited, which was quite unusual ...
— The Golden Face - A Great 'Crook' Romance • William Le Queux
... much experience she faced the hot wind and sniffed again, while her eyes searched keenly the sky line, which was the ragged top of the bluff marking the northern boundary of the great prairie land. A trifle darker it was there, and there was a certain sullen glow discernible only to eyes trained to read the sky for warning signals of ...
— Lonesome Land • B. M. Bower
... alone had seen anything clearly. Several of the blacks averred that they too had obtained a good view of the creature but their descriptions of it varied so greatly that Jenssen, who had seen nothing himself, was inclined to be a trifle skeptical. One of the blacks insisted that the thing had been eleven feet tall, with a man's body and the head of an elephant. Another had seen THREE immense Arabs with huge, black beards; but when, after conquering their nervousness, the rear guard advanced upon the enemy's position to investigate ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... discovery about this time. After her aunt's illness the housekeeping affairs fell altogether into her hands; and she was startled to find how very small the sum was that must cover their expenses from year's end to year's end. The trifle received from the school-children, paltry as it was, seemed quite too precious to be given up. Her aunt's comforts were few, but they must be fewer still without this. No: the school must be kept up, at any cost of labour and pains ...
— The Orphans of Glen Elder • Margaret Murray Robertson
... age Are clamoring now for "all the rage" To give a dash of color To their complexions, which appear To be the hue they hold so dear— Except a trifle duller. ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... Sapphics of the Cab-stand Punch Justice to Scotland Punch The Poetical Cookery-book. Punch The Steak Roasted Sucking Pig Beignet de Pomme Cherry Pie Deviled Biscuit Red Herrings Irish Stew Barley Broth Calf's Heart The Christmas Pudding Apple Pie Lobster Salad Stewed Steak Green Pea Soup Trifle Mutton Chops Barley Water Boiled Chicken Stewed Duck and Peas Curry The Railway Gilpin Punch Elegy Punch The Boa and the Blanket Punch The Dilly and the D's Punch A Book in a Bustle Punch Stanzas for the Sentimental. ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... by-standers, to whom no doubt such a figure was not novel. Incongruously enough, the friar held over his head in the pouring rain a modern umbrella, his only concession to the storm and to modernity. Presently we climbed in for the journey, and I was a trifle taken aback when the monk by chance followed me directly, and as we settled into our seats was my close vis-a-vis. As we bumped along the rough road our legs became dove-tailed together, I as well as he wrapped in the coarse folds of his monkish robe, the rosary as convenient to my ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... devil—for characteristically enough Crusoe's first lesson includes a little instruction upon the enemy of mankind. He found, however, that it was 'not so easy to imprint right notions in Friday's mind about the devil, as it was about the being of a God.' This is comparatively a trifle; but Crusoe himself is all but impossible. Steele, indeed, gives an account of Selkirk, from which he infers that 'this plain man's story is a memorable example that he is happiest who confines his wants to natural necessities;' but the ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... starting, Trevyllyan?" asked the coach of the Charsley Hall Eight, a trifle pale and anxious. "See, they are all under way. Glanville Ferrers, the Christ Church stroke, swears you shan't bump him as you did last week. He must be past ...
— The Casual Ward - academic and other oddments • A. D. Godley
... Countess was dancing with glee, Her stocking's security fell from her knee. Allusions and hints, sneers and whispers went round; The trifle was scouted, and left on the ground. When Edward the Brave, with true soldier-like spirit, Cried, 'The garter is mine; 'tis the order of merit; The first knight in my court shall be happy to wear, Proud distinction! the garter that fell from the fair: While in letters of gold—'tis your ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 194, July 16, 1853 • Various
... still a trifle pale. "Why, my dear sir, all these rites and customs over which the Vicar of Helleston and I have been disputing—these May-day observances, in themselves apparently so puerile but so obviously symbolical to one who looks ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Phoebe and Miss Vesta, to prepare for the annual festivity, by polishing the already shining house to a hardly imaginable point of brilliant cleanliness. In the kitchen of the Temple, Diploma Grotty ruled supreme, as she had ruled for twenty years. Miss Phoebe was occasionally permitted to trifle with a jelly or a cream, but even this was upon sufferance; while if Miss Vesta ever had any culinary aspirations, they were put down with a high hand, and an injunction not to meddle with them things, but see ...
— Geoffrey Strong • Laura E. Richards
... nothing could save her, it was resolved to hold a levee. The foreign ministers were to come to court, and the king, in the midst of his real grief, did not forget to send word to his pages to be sure to have his last new ruffles sewed on the shirt he was to put on that day; a trifle which often, as Lord Hervey remarks, shows more of the real character than events of importance, from which one frequently knows no more of a person's state of mind than one does of his natural gait from ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... world; and so this very presentable city, in the heart of India, is a mixture of Orientalism and European innovation, the streets even being lighted by gas. Though, to speak honestly, this last fact seemed a trifle out of place; wild monkeys and crocodiles in the environs, ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... said I, 'we are here in very strange circumstances, as you know; do not trifle with us. If you have indeed been with those who have taken the control of our city, do not keep us in suspense. You will see by the emblems of my office that it is to me you must address yourself; if you ...
— A Beleaguered City • Mrs. Oliphant
... "A mere trifle which a friend once gave me," replied the Master Mariner, reading in the Princess's eyes and demeanor that she desired the talisman. "If Your Majesty will only deign to accept it, it ...
— The Firelight Fairy Book • Henry Beston
... the tail is a trifle long and heavy for the kite, but if we are going to compare Luzon with "the Southern Islands," by which Blount can presumably only mean the rest of the archipelago, why not really do it? The process involves nothing more complicated than ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... for ever seeking to discover the significant trifle which embodies the whole character of a scene, or place, or person, so those unconscious artists—the Forsytes had fastened by intuition on this hat; it was their significant trifle, the detail in which was embedded ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... asked the earl, 'what means this mystification? Miss McCabe, Melissa, do not trifle with me. Is this part of the great American Joke? You are playing it pretty low down on me, Melissa!' he ended, the phrase being one of those with which she had ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... It looked all right, if anything it was a trifle subdued; there was a little foam about its mouth, but ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... had you had to endure unspeakable torments in your brain, and to toss through sleepless feverish nights, then indeed you would have something to complain of. But as it is, the whole matter is a sheer trifle, and ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... He meant to make a wide detour and then work back again to the Double Arrow range. If the ranch were really deserted, he meant to fire the buildings, before attempting his escape. Such a revenge would be a trifle compared to that which he had planned, but it would be better than nothing, while one more offense would not lengthen his term in jail any, if he were caught afterward. He felt in his pocket for the whiskey flask, and swore when he found it missing. He wanted the liquor, but he wanted the ...
— Hidden Gold • Wilder Anthony
... was I! it repents me I have let it so reasonable. I might so well have had after threescore as such a trifle; For, seeing they were distressed, they would have given largely. I was a right sot; but I'll be overseen no ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VI • Robert Dodsley
... the mite that is to manifest the love we entertain for our king. And here is the money we have collected, good king, and I would urgently entreat thee in the name of our community graciously to accept the trifle offered thee by thy faithful Mennonite subjects, who will never cease to ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... hotel in Cienfuegos, there sat upon the sidewalk of the street a blind beggar, a Chinese coolie, whose miserable, poverty-stricken appearance elicited a daily trifle from the habitues of the house. Early one morning we discovered this representative of want and misery purchasing a lottery ticket. They are so divided and subdivided, it appears, as to come even within the means of the street beggars! Speaking of blindness, the multiplicity of ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... as I sat musing, and I relighted it and resumed my reading of the type-written notes, lazily, even a trifle sceptically, for all the evidence that she had been able to collect to substantiate her theory of the existence of the ux was not half as important as the evidence I was to produce in the shape of that ...
— In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers
... Norgate reassured him. "Let's see, it's Tuesday, isn't it? I call him Boko. He never leaves me. My week-end shadowers are a trifle less assiduous, but Boko is suspicious. He has deucedly long ...
— The Double Traitor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... character of Earle in his Life of Hooker, published in the year of Earle's death: 'Dr. Earle, now Lord Bishop of Salisbury, of whom I may justly say, (and let it not offend him, because it is such a trifle as ought not to be concealed from posterity, or those that now live, and yet know him not,) that since Mr. Hooker died, none have lived whom God hath blessed with more innocent wisdom, more sanctified learning, or a more pious, peaceable, primitive temper: so that this excellent person ...
— Characters from 17th Century Histories and Chronicles • Various
... that he had ordered nothing more than the carrying out of his visitor's wishes. But it seemed to Kettle that he protested just a trifle too ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... a health cure," explained Billie, a trifle wearily, for now that the excitement of catching the Codfish was over the girls were beginning to feel cold and hungry and rather forlorn. "We're just leaving Three ...
— Billie Bradley at Three Towers Hall - or, Leading a Needed Rebellion • Janet D. Wheeler
... went to the window facing the ocean, pushed Rags aside a trifle, and cuddled down beside him on the window-seat. The dawn was growing every moment brighter. The streak of gray along the horizon had grown to a broad belt of pink, and very faintly the objects on the beach were beginning to be visible. Rags still ...
— The Dragon's Secret • Augusta Huiell Seaman
... desirable. He actually persuaded himself to say that it was lovely to see the reflections of life in her tranquil spirit; and when I looked at him incredulously he grew angry, and hinted that Cecily's sensitiveness to reflections and other things might be a trifle beyond her mother's ken. 'She responds instantly, intimately, to ...
— The Pool in the Desert • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... Athenadas by name, said to himself: "Dercylidas does but trifle to waste his time here, whilst I with my own hand can draw off their water from the men of Cybrene"; wherewith he ran forward with his division and essayed to choke up the spring which supplied the city. But the garrison sallied out and covered ...
— Hellenica • Xenophon
... of "Victory!" rang all along the line; but—would you believe it?—there were twenty-five thousand Frenchmen lying on the ground! A trifle, eh? Well, such a thing had never been seen before. It was a regular harvest field after the reaping; only instead of stalks of grain there were bodies of men. That sobered the rest of us. But the Emperor soon came along, and when we formed a circle around him, he praised ...
— Folk-Tales of Napoleon - The Napoleon of the People; Napoleonder • Honore de Balzac and Alexander Amphiteatrof
... more gentle than striking; her eyes were very blue and full of animation; she had a rich complexion; her hair was light yellow, but not colorless; her nose, slightly aquiline; her red lips were a trifle thick, like those of all the Hapsburgs; her hands and feet were models of beauty; she had an impressive carriage, and was a little above the medium height. When she arrived in France, she was a little too stout, and her face was a little too red; but after ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... physiology of men and whales before deciding if the story is true; it just indulges in a hearty laugh and blows the story to Hades. Miracle-mongers are quite helpless when a man turns round and says, "My dear sir, that story's just a trifle too thin." They see his case is a hopeless one, and leave him to the tender mercies of the Lord ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote
... prayed devoutly. Zbyszko knelt among the Mazurs, and committed himself to God's protection. From time to time he glanced at Danusia who was sitting beside the princess; he considered it an honor to be the knight of such a girl, and that his vow was not a trifle. He had already girded his sides with a hempen rope, but this was only half of his vow; now it was necessary to fulfill the other half which was more difficult. Consequently now, when he was more serious than when in the inn drinking beer, he was anxious ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... dwelling could be found. The woman was believed to be a little "daft," for she always hid herself when any of the town's people appeared near her shanty. She had a garden, in which she raised potatoes and corn, and kept a pig and a cow; and these furnished her subsistence, with the trifle which her son earned by odd jobs. The woman's name was Nancy Monk, and her boy's was Peter Monk, though certainly the surname was not needed to suggest the nickname by which he was ...
— Little Bobtail - or The Wreck of the Penobscot. • Oliver Optic
... it, he swore that the books were not the same books they had had out in Wyoming; that the whole part had been cut clean out to suit the book to the infernal public schools, Saloonio's language being—at any rate, as the Colonel quoted it—undoubtedly a trifle free. Then the Colonel took to annotating his book at the side with such remarks as, "Enter Saloonio," or "A tucket sounds; enter Saloonio, on the arm of the Prince of Morocco." When there was no reasonable ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock
... that Jurgen and Chloris lived very pleasantly together, though Jurgen began to find his Hamadryad a trifle unperceptive, ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... then, when people make a great fuss about a trifle, they are apt to hear the remark, "'Tis the crumpled rose leaf!" and when they spend too much thought upon their bodily comfort, and indulge in too much luxury, they ...
— The Story of the Greeks • H. A. Guerber
... Opera over-night (indeed her husband, on her right, with his fat hand dangling over the pew-door, is at this minute thinking of Mademoiselle Leocadie, whom he saw behind the scenes)—she has been at the Opera over-night, which with a trifle of supper afterwards—a white-and-brown soup, a lobster-salad, some woodcocks, and a little champagne—sent her to bed quite comfortable. At half-past eight her maid brings her chocolate in bed, at ten she has fresh eggs and muffins, with, perhaps, a half-hundred of prawns for breakfast, and ...
— George Cruikshank • William Makepeace Thackeray
... great offices of State, any one of which might have taxed the powers of a tried administrator, in the feeble hands of a child appears at first sight a trifle irrational; but there was always method in Henry's madness. In bestowing these administrative posts upon his children he was really concentrating them in his own person and bringing them directly under his own supervision. ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... depends upon the meaning attached to the word thorough. We often hear it said that "Trifles make perfection, and perfection is no trifle"; also that "thoroughness has to do with details." Again, as a warning against carelessness in little matters, ...
— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry
... purples—fell under the gaze of that lady's slanting eyes, she sat opposite the Slavonic Jove and smoked her cigarette between sips of coffee. Frequently she smiled. The short powerful hand of the man stroked his beard and he beamed out of his cunning eyes, eyes a trifle too porcine to suggest ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath
... monster who was engaged with three antagonists, and as I glanced at his fierce face, filled with the light of battle, I recognized Tars Tarkas the Thark. He did not see me, as I was a trifle behind him, and just then the three warriors opposing him, and whom I recognized as Warhoons, charged simultaneously. The mighty fellow made quick work of one of them, but in stepping back for another thrust he fell over a dead body behind him and was down and ...
— A Princess of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... accurately—and perhaps a trifle grimly—the strong, friendly face behind the desk was searching us and sizing us up. He knew us for what we were—a group of nice boys, too sleek, too cheerfully secure, to show the ambition of the true student. There ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... allowance would require to be made for that too. In some cases a man may be curing fish where he has to provide a booth for himself, and he has to get covering from the fish-curer or merchant. That, however, would only be a trifle., ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... to Jacob Flanders, and tasted the sweetness of death in effigy; and Mrs. Durrant, sitting behind her in the dark of the box, sighed her sharp sigh; and Mr. Wortley, shifting his position behind the Italian Ambassador's wife, thought that Brangaena was a trifle hoarse; and suspended in the gallery many feet above their heads, Edward Whittaker surreptitiously held a torch to his miniature score; and ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... still remained that other climb, to reach the broken window and through it freedom and friends outside. However, this was a trifle. Montgomery brought a short ladder, which he placed beneath the window that he had had the forethought to unbolt from the outside, and when the sash rolled back in its groove Katharine was already on the ledge, Susanna's strong arms clasping her and ...
— The Brass Bound Box • Evelyn Raymond
... dupes in England. The proofs were damning. A considerable sum had been extorted from a man named Desforges, under pretence of erecting an institution in London, and this sum had been expended by Brissot on himself. This was but a trifle: Brissot, on quitting England, had left in the hands of this Desforges twenty-four letters, which but too plainly established his participation in the infamous trade of libels carried on by his allies. It was proved to demonstration that Brissot had connived at the sending ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... use trying to get legal redress from our landlord, or from the neighbours; there were too many of them; and if we had told our story,—how we had been robbed of four hundred darics and our clothes and rugs and everything, most people would only have thought we were making a fuss about a trifle. So we had to think what was to be done: here we were, absolutely destitute, in a foreign country. For my part, I thought I might as well put a sword through my ribs there and then, and have done with it, rather than endure the humiliation that might be forced upon us ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... with it. I demand to be interested. But don't trifle with me, John. Remember that an old man's ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... the girls were having a great struggle over some trifle he had snatched from her hand, and the rest stood about laughing to see her desperate attempts to recover it. This was a familiar form of courtship in Kesota, and an evening filled with such romping was considered a "cracking ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... on one side of her, and had fired a couple of large-calibre shells into Eblis at point-blank range, narrowly missing her vitals. Even so, Eblis is as impartial as a prize-court. She reports that the second shot, a trifle of eight inches, "may have been fired at a different time or just after colliding." But the night was yet young, and "just after getting clear of this cruiser an enemy battle-cruiser grazed past our stern at high speed" and ...
— Sea Warfare • Rudyard Kipling
... which may be useful; we may call the power of association to our assistance: this power is sometimes a full match for the most lively sensations. For instance, suppose a boy of strong feelings had been offended by some trifle, and expressed sensations of hatred against the offender obviously too violent for the occasion; to bring the angry boy's imagination to a temperate state, we might recall some circumstance of his former affection for the offender; or the general idea, that it is amiable and ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth
... philosophy—meaning, I suppose, their principles and ends, their accounts of God and the soul, their views on the material and the immaterial, their respective identification of pleasure or goodness with the desirable and the Happy; well, it is easy—it is quite a trifle—to deliver an opinion after such a hearing; but really to know where the truth lies will be work, I suspect, not for a few hours, but for a good many days. If not, what can have induced them to enlarge on these rudiments to the tune of a hundred or a thousand volumes apiece? ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... much as all Christmas Eve services do, an occasional prompting, a song a trifle off key, a crying baby quickly ...
— Pearl and Periwinkle • Anna Graetz
... like a pretty peasant girl, quite Italian in his style, with a dress that was a trifle neater than ...
— Among the Brigands • James de Mille
... worth being separated, for the pleasure of meeting again! (Kisses her.) And such nice letters from you, every single day—thank you, darling! (Kisses her again.) And you look just the same—just the same! Perhaps a trifle paler, but ...
— Three Comedies • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... knife and rifle and snowshoes and went after the lynx—for that he decided the animal must be. There was no urgent reason why he should want to kill a lynx, unless perhaps that killing it made the store-shed a trifle safer; but it was the first trail of any living thing for many days; it promised excitement; some ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... early, experimenting on his playthings with a set of small carpenter's tools, which his father had given him. At six he was still at home. "Mr. Watt," said a friend to the father, "you ought to send that boy to school, and not let him trifle away his time at home." "Look what he is doing before you condemn him," was the reply. The visitor then observed the child had drawn mathematical lines and figures on the hearth, and was engaged in a process of calculation. On putting questions to him, he was astonished ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... I should 'ave shut me bl—y eyes,' cried Sawkins. 'I wouldn't pass it for a trifle ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... his own mouth shall he be confuted. In the fourth epistle of his Essay on Man, a specimen selected purely at random from his works, and extending altogether to three hundred and ninety-eight lines, there are no less than twenty-seven (that is, a trifle more than one out of every fifteen,) made up entirely of monosyllables: and over and above these, there are one hundred and fifteen which have in them only one word of greater length; and yet there are few dull creepers among the ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 50. Saturday, October 12, 1850 • Various
... superiorities, the Cluthe Truss— including the professional services of the members of the Cluthe Institute— costs only a trifle more than the worthless trusses which do little ...
— Cluthe's Advice to the Ruptured • Chas. Cluthe & Sons
... Joseph had taken it from her work-basket that morning to buy cigars. One of the girls had cried, and even Grey's lips grew scarlet; her Welsh blood maddened. This woman was neither an angel nor an idiot, Paul Blecker. Then—it was such a trifle! Poor Joseph! he had been her mother's favorite, was spoiled a little. So she hurried to his chamber-door with his shaving-water, calling, "Brother!" Grey had a low, always pleasant voice, I remember; you looked in her eyes, when you heard it, to see her ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... think Bailey is just a trifle interested there,—in Mary Snow, I mean?" asked Miss Craig when ...
— A Woman for Mayor - A Novel of To-day • Helen M. Winslow
... much precious time to so little benefit! How sad is it to see men spend their precious time, in which they should work out their salvation, by labouring, as in the fire, to prove an uncertain and doubtful proposition, and to trifle away their time, in which they should make their calling and election sure, to make sure of an opinion which, when they have done all, they are not infallibly sure whether it be true or no; because all things necessary to salvation and church-communion are plainly laid ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... and Uncertainty is a Trifle, to the vast Discoveries of these Explicatory Optick-Glasses; for here are seen the Nature and Consequences of Secret Mysteries: Here are read strange Mysteries relating to Predestination, Eternal Decrees, and the like: Here 'tis plainly prov'd, That Predestination is, ...
— The Consolidator • Daniel Defoe
... thou do that. Eulalya. Fyrste in the ouerseynge my householde, which is the very charge and cure of wyues, I wayted euer, not onely gyuynge hede that nothing shoulde be forgotten or undoone, but that althynges should be as he woulde haue it, wer it euer so small a trifle. xan. wherin. Eulalia. As thus. Yf mi good man had a fantasye to this thynge, or to that thyng, or if he would haue his meate dressed on this fashion, or that fashion. xan. But howe couldest thou fashyon thye selfe ...
— A Merry Dialogue Declaringe the Properties of Shrowde Shrews and Honest Wives • Desiderius Erasmus
... your mother, child, and always will be." But ever after Mistress Wynne was a trifle afraid of my little lady, and there were no ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... warmer. I don't have to ask anybody where I shall go," and now the man's tone was a trifle defiant. ...
— Ruth Fielding Down East - Or, The Hermit of Beach Plum Point • Alice B. Emerson
... scheme which would have tasked the energies of the youngest and strongest. He seems to have contemplated for a time a series of books which should cover almost the whole field of English law and be a modern substitute for Blackstone. The only part of this actually executed—but that part was no trifle—was another book upon the English Criminal Law. It was, in truth, as he ventured to say, 'a remarkable achievement for a busy man to have written at spare moments.' We must, of course, take into account his long previous familiarity ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... under the open sky, surrounded by people of the poorest and lowest classes, and never received the slightest ill-treatment either by word or deed. I never had anything stolen, and when ever I gave any little trifle to a child, {200} such as a piece of bread, cheese, or the like, their parents always endeavoured to show their gratitude by other acts of kindness. Oh, that the Europeans only knew how easily these simple children of nature might be won by attention and kindness! But, unfortunately, they will ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... duties shall be imposed or shall be laid by Upper Canada, which renders unnecessary the establishing of Custom-houses on the line which divides the two provinces, but saves to both an expense which, in all probability, would far exceed any trifle of revenue that this agreement may take from one or the other of the provinces more than their ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... with its defences, covered an area of about forty-three acres. In outline it was four-sided; its east and west sides were parallel to one another, and the whole resembled a rectangle which had been pulled a trifle askew. Round it ran a solid earthen rampart, 50 ft. broad at the base and strengthened with woodwork (plan, B). In front of the rampart was a wet ditch (A), 100 ft. wide, fed with fresh water from a neighbouring brook by an inlet at the south-western corner (C) and emptied by an outfall on the ...
— Ancient Town-Planning • F. Haverfield
... accordingly pushed forward at a rapid gait to sustain Wilcox; while Anderson, with the balance of his division, and fourteen rifled guns, was sent to the junction of the River road and Mine road to hold that important position. McLaws arrived about two P.M., and found Wilcox skirmishing, a trifle beyond Salem Church. He was drawn back a few hundred yards, while Kershaw and Wofford were thrown out upon Wilcox's right, and Semmes and Mahone on his left. Wofford arrived somewhat late, as he had been temporarily left at the junction of the Mine and plank roads to guard them. McLaws's ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... was taking it from Paris to Boston in the steamship Catalania; the ship supposed to have foundered, with the loss of all hands, off the Banks of Newfoundland, sixteen days after the nameless ship left Spezia. I made a record of this trifle, and forgot it until, many months later, a private communication from the head of the New York Secret Service told me that the man I wanted was in London; that he was an American millionaire, who owned a house on the banks of the Hudson River; who had great influence ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton
... New Yorker, gave the following facts and figures: "During last season the sales from one acre of early tomatoes amounted to $454, and from a trifle more than two and one half acres, including the acre of 'earlies,' the remainder mid-season and late plantings, the total sales amounted to over $900. From a little less than one acre and a half $555 worth of ...
— Three Acres and Liberty • Bolton Hall
... beware, (the shade replies,) Nor trust the sex that is so rarely wise; When earnest to explore thy secret breast, Unfold some trifle, but conceal the rest. But in thy consort cease to fear a foe, For thee she feels sincerity of woe; When Troy first bled beneath the Grecian arms, She shone unrivall'd with a blaze of charms; Thy ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... one?' His companion took it, examined it, upside and down, to the light and from it, and replied—'As good as the bank! But we must share?' 'To be sure we must,' said the finder. 'Why should you doubt it? 'Tis a trifle; five guineas a piece; but it will serve to ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... seems, though it was all they at first demanded, did not prove quite sufficient. Some debts they were obliged to contract,—to no great amount, indeed,—and these must be paid or the scheme relinquished. Having gone so far into the scheme, it was absurd to let a trifle stop me. I must own, had I foreseen all the demands that have been made from time to time, I should never have engaged in it; but I have been led on from one step to another, till I fear it would avail me nothing to hesitate ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... reserve. And how pretty it was of the girl, Emily thought, to care so much about her health and her spirits, to be so interested in the details of her every-day life, even in the simple matter of the preparation and serving of her food, as if the merest trifle was of consequence. It had been unfair, too, to fancy that she felt no interest in Walderhurst's absence and return. She had noticed everything closely, and actually thought he ought ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... photograph of a girl whose eyes looked definitely out of it, dark, large, well shaded, full of a desire to be beautiful at once expressed and fulfilled. The nose was a trifle heavily blocked, but the mouth had sensitiveness and charm. There was a heaviness in the chin, too, but the free springing curve of the neck contradicted that, and the symmetry of the face defied analysis. It was turned a ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)
... too, was happy, except when her mother, a severe Pomona, with enormous earrings and splendid fazzoletto of crimson and orange dyes, pounced down upon her for some supposed infraction of good manners—creanza, as they vividly express it here. Only Luigi looked a trifle bored. But Luigi has been a soldier, and has now attained the supercilious superiority of young-manhood, which smokes its cigar of an evening in the piazza and knows the merits of the different cafes. The great business of the evening began when the eating was over, and the decanters ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... some anxiety, the outcome of the examination. When I told him I was second among fifteen I was surprised that he attached so much importance to a matter of so little interest to me. It was all one to me! Broken hearted as I felt, how could I be affected by such a trifle? ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti
... what you'd rather, sir! You haven't your choice! You haven't your choice at all, sir! When God gets ready for you to die he'll let you know, sir! And you've no right to trifle with his mercy in the meanwhile. I'm not a man to teach men to whine after each other for aid; but every principle has its limitations, Mr. Richling. You say you went over the whole subject. Yes; well, didn't you strike the fact that suicide is an ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... leg it at a trifle over nineteen knots," Captain Jones declared, as he picked up his cap, "and, anyway, anything's better than having one of those short-haired, smooth-tongued, blustering ...
— The Box with Broken Seals • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... like of thee, may serve a whim, as we chew a betel-leaf and trifle with a flower; but my husband is my master, and can do with me as he will. My life is wrapped up in him—and when he dies, alas! I will certainly die too. ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... name, Missy?" asked Life, becoming very sedate all at once; for, rough as his manners were, he had a kind heart, and would not trifle with the ...
— A Lieutenant at Eighteen • Oliver Optic
... Marshall drew himself back, and up to his great height, lightning and thunder-clouds in his gray eyes, his powerful arms folded, his fine head crowned with its wealth of beautiful gold hair thrown a trifle back and up, his lips shut in a thin, firm line, his whole attitude that of the fighter; but he did not speak. He only looked from one to another of the wild young mob, searching for a friend; and, finding none, he stood firm, defying ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... himself in his walk, and, turning to Hans, said abruptly: 'Have you taken the child his food?' 'Yes, your Grace,' was the reply. 'And—er—how did he seem—well, eh?' 'Quite well, your Grace.' 'You are sure of that?' a trifle anxiously. 'Perfectly sure, your Grace,' replied the old man, though he would have liked to have added a word as to his doubts concerning the child's happiness; but the Archbishop dismissed him with a wave of the hand, and, turning away, ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham
... mother's work, and was felt as a sore loss by Jimmy, who was in the habit of following him about, and watching him when he was at work. Sometimes his brother gave the little fellow a trifle to do, and Jimmy was always pleased to help, for he was fond of work, and when he grew older and stronger he was himself a sturdy and indefatigable worker in ways not ...
— From Canal Boy to President - Or The Boyhood and Manhood of James A. Garfield • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... can I help you?" came a voice from the doorway, and Gus Plum appeared. The former bully of the Hall was a trifle thin and pale, but his eyes were clear and his ...
— Dave Porter and His Rivals - or, The Chums and Foes of Oak Hall • Edward Stratemeyer
... was a trifle late and the roll of the jury had already been called, and the perennial excuses heard, when he entered the court room; but the clerk, who knew him, nodded in a welcoming manner, checked him off as present and dropped ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... dinner as he spread before us! A little roasted pig, over which Mr. Sumner grew pathetic as he described its baby-like appearance before it was cooked, when Tamah, their invaluable cook, brought it in to show them—potatoes, rice, etc., and for dessert, trifle, cake, muffins, waffles of a most excellent variety, and I don't know what. But the spice of the dinner was a long and animated discussion over the cause of General Stevenson's arrest and other matters ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various
... "But little." He is prepared for death, and takes leave of Bassanio. But Shylock is impatient. "We trifle time," he cries; "I pray ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... Athens obtained the most extensive influence, and an almost absolute dominion over the allies, was possibly found in other Grecian states which had subject confederates, such as Thebes, Elis, and Argos. But on account of the remoteness of many countries, it is impossible that every trifle could have been brought before the court at Athens; we must therefore suppose that each subject state had an inferior jurisdiction of its own, and that the supreme jurisdiction alone belonged to Athens. Can it, indeed, be supposed that persons ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... second-hand shop along the mountain road; and the man who kept the shop was so surprised to have a call for such odd chairs and tables that Mrs. Markin was able to pick up some splendid pieces for a mere trifle. Then the sleeping rooms, Mrs. Markin's and her daughter's, besides the guest room, were on the first floor, while Jack, the big boy of the family, had his "bunk" on the loft, and up there also was a "bunk" for any of Jack's friends who might ...
— Dorothy Dale's Camping Days • Margaret Penrose
... strong, and so male, with his black brows and clear forehead, the heavy jaw, the big, overhanging moustache: such a man, with strength and male power, and a certain blind, native beauty. She might have liked him as a man. And here he stood in some other capacity, bullying over such a trifle as a boy's speaking out without permission. Yet he was not a little, fussy man. He seemed to have some cruel, stubborn, evil spirit, he was imprisoned in a task too small and petty for him, which yet, in a servile acquiescence, he would fulfil, because he had to earn his living. He ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... intend such a thorough exploration of Hawaii, but mean only to see the volcano of Kilauea, your pleasantest plan is to ride from Hilo by the direct road to the crater, and return by way of Puna. You will have ridden a trifle over one hundred miles through a very remarkable and in some parts a beautiful country; you will have slept one night in a native house, and will have seen much of Hawaiian life, and enjoyed a tiring but at the same time a very novel journey, and some sights which can not be matched outside ...
— Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands • Charles Nordhoff
... their money until the morrow; but Montague figured a profit of a trifle under a quarter of a million for himself. Of this about twenty thousand would go to make up the share of his unknown informant; the balance he considered would be an ample reward for his six hours' work ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair
... who would also, no doubt, make themselves agreeable, and to whom the brother and sister might go for all necessary information—Dubois would see to that. Sixty francs a month paid the appartement; a trifle for service if you desired it—there was, however, no compulsion—to the concierge would make you comfortable; and as for your food, the Quartier Montmartre abounded in cheap restaurants, and you might live as you pleased for one franc a day or twenty. He suggested that on the whole no better ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... good if there is shelter. On a wall, S. or S.-W. is best. Plant single cordons in good ground, they will soon grow and bear. Double-grafted trees are dearer, yet cheap. All in such soil should be on Quince. On chalk or gravel soils they must be on the pear or free stock. Older trees cost a trifle more, but never buy old trees. Old trees are like old folks, they rarely transplant well. Avoid horizontal or double cordons. The former are too near the ground, and often in the gardener's way. The latter are not so manageable as single stems. Sometimes single stems ...
— The Book of Pears and Plums • Edward Bartrum
... said, blushing a trifle, for he was as yet hardly accustomed to praise, and quite unspoiled. "But there comes Frank with the machine. Did you see us ...
— The Airplane Boys among the Clouds - or, Young Aviators in a Wreck • John Luther Langworthy
... Has been a trifle swift. My meaning stretched Not quite so far as that.... And yet—and yet It matters little. Nothing ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... go back to camp with me, and bunk in with us to-night," suggested the lad, "We shall want to make an early start in the morning, anyway. I think it will be safer there, too. That pair won't dare come fooling around our camp, knowing they can't trifle with us," added the lad, with a note of pride ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in New Mexico • Frank Gee Patchin
... a way to miss the Colonel's dinner. The dishes which the Bengali cook turned out were excellent, but the host himself was a trifle dictatorial and too fond of the sound of his own voice, while certain of the inevitable guests were still worse. Mrs. Gradinger's letter came as a relief; indeed the Marchesa had been wondering why she had ever consented to go and pretend to enjoy herself ...
— The Cook's Decameron: A Study in Taste: - Containing Over Two Hundred Recipes For Italian Dishes • Mrs. W. G. Waters
... enable the Secretary of War to keep cavalry and artillery horses, worn-out in long performance of duty. Such horses fetch but a trifle when sold; and rather than turn them out to the misery awaiting them when thus disposed of, it would be better to employ them at light work around the posts, and when necessary to put ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... Tom was a trifle embarrassed at finding Eliza in Dr. Gray's office when he entered, on the next afternoon. The boss packer seemed different than usual; he was much subdued. His cough had disappeared, but in its place he suffered a nervous apprehension; his cheeks were pale, the gloom ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... a famous gatherer of clews, losing sight of no significant trifle, as the scout saying is, and a star scout into the bargain, if we are to believe Pee-wee Harris. I am not so sure that the ten merit badges of bugling, craftsmanship, architecture, aviation, carpentry, camping, ...
— Tom Slade on Mystery Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... boys regarded 'Westward Ho!' as a home-lesson, while the 'Three Musketeers' set fire to none of them. Even 'Treasure Island' left most of them cold; though Eagar, reading it aloud, had tried to persuade himself that little Rattray had breathed a trifle quicker as the blind man's stick came tap tapping along the road. The sea was nothing but a name to the whole number of scholars (eighteen of them, boys and girls all told). Not one of them had pierced past the township that lay ninety miles away to the right of them; indeed, ...
— Peeps At Many Lands: Australia • Frank Fox
... Sheila, their guest Carmel, and a chauffeur. Major Rogers was still suffering from the effects of wounds, and was more or less of a semi-invalid, a condition which made him fussy at times, and too independent at others, for directly he felt a trifle better he would immediately begin to break all the rules that the doctors had laid down for his treatment. He was an amusing, humorous sort of man, who would jest between spasms of pain, and generally found something to laugh at in the various episodes of ...
— The Princess of the School • Angela Brazil
... Souza I wish to see him here at once," he told the servant, and, though the message was a trifle peremptory from a host to his guest, Da Souza promptly ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the door. He ran homeward through the rain, the storm which soaked him to the skin being but a trifle compared to ...
— The Woman-Haters • Joseph C. Lincoln
... removed, and had it not afforded me a convenient illustration here, perhaps I should never have thought of it again; still, it may not yet be forgiven. It may seem strange that I should speak so seriously of God's forgiveness for such a trifle as that. Does He notice a child's ringing a door-bell in play? He notices when a child is willing to yield to temptation to do what she knows to be wrong, and to act even in the slightest trifle from a selfish disregard for the convenience of others. This spirit ...
— The Teacher • Jacob Abbott
... we bother an ancient about such a trifle? It will take less than half a second to reduce our poor Pygmalion to a pinch of dust. Why not calcine the ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... the drawing-room with a quiet deliberation greater even than common. It was the effect that haste and contrition frequently wrought in her—one of the things that made folk call her 'too self-contained,' even 'a trifle supercilious.' ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... dependence on the promises of great men; I look to the booksellers for support; they are my best friends, and I am not inclined to forsake them for others.'" "Thus," continues Sir John, "did this idiot in the affairs of the world trifle with his fortunes, and put back the hand that was held out to ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... among the rice- plantations, and, since the publication of some of the animal-myths in the newspapers, I have received a version of it from a planter in southwest Georgia; but it seems to me to be an intruder among the genuine myth-stories of the negroes. It is a trifle too elaborate. Nevertheless, it is told upon the plantations with great gusto, and there are ...
— Uncle Remus • Joel Chandler Harris
... man, Athos," he replied, "to doubt me thus. Where and when have you seen me trifle with a friend's heart and a king's life? I have told you, and I repeat it, that to-night we rescue Charles I. You left it to me to discover the means and I ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... but just and reasonable you should pay for occasioning such disturbance. By your own showing you are in easy circumstances,—for it is only natural to presume that a man who owes nothing must be in a condition to pay liberally,—and you cannot therefore feel the loss of such a trifle as ten guineas." ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... course, high rank requires a large rent roll. In fact, a New York gentleman requires more than a trifle to support him. I can't dress on less than ...
— Driven From Home - Carl Crawford's Experience • Horatio Alger
... the days in Albany spent with his aunt, and she responded in sensitive reserve, which presently softened under his gentle courtesy, leaving her beautiful, dark eyes a trifle dim and her scarlet ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... a special, formal visit for a trifle like that. Hilda will run round at once. It won't take ...
— Lalage's Lovers - 1911 • George A. Birmingham
... cool, resolute, soliderly, and inflexible in his cursed principles. His son seems his very model; you cannot conceive the mischief he may do. I know mankind, Evandale—were he an insignificant, fanatical, country booby, do you think I would have refused such a trifle as his life to Lady Margaret and this family? But this is a lad of fire, zeal, and education—and these knaves want but such a leader to direct their blind enthusiastic hardiness. I mention this, not as refusing your request, ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... and a trifle over, lies the market town of Helston (or 'Helleston' as men wrote it in 1734, and ought to write it still); on the road to nowhere and somnolent then as now, but then as now waking up once a year, on the 8th of May, to celebrate the Feast of Flora and welcome ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... threw back his cloak and sat up a trifle straighten "Three future refugees!" he exclaimed. "The world moves! You want to be pushing me away already, do you? Sit down, I'll tell ...
— Historic Boyhoods • Rupert Sargent Holland
... This, my lords, to trifle no longer, is the proper preamble to this bill, which contains only the conditions on which the people of this kingdom are to be allowed henceforward to riot in debauchery, in debauchery licensed by law, and countenanced by the ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 11. - Parlimentary Debates II. • Samuel Johnson
... see you so much." Katherine smiled a trifle wanly. "You were so good to me when first I was hurt. I remember the whole thing. I won't try to talk of that now. Later, when you can stay longer. There is something I wish you would do for me. Nurse read me the names ...
— Marjorie Dean, College Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... child is himself a medical man, and yet Dr. Winter is the same as ever. I can see no change since first I can remember him, save that perhaps the brindled hair is a trifle whiter, and the huge shoulders a little more bowed. He is a very tall man, though he loses a couple of inches from his stoop. That big back of his has curved itself over sick beds until it has set in that shape. His face is of a walnut brown, and tells of long ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle
... "the very thing—on this very road too. Whether the story is true or not, it is reasonable enough, although a trifle dramatic, but that is what is wanted to attract a girl like Nell. She don't care for me and never will, and all she wants is excitement and novelty, but if she thinks I saved her life or risked ...
— Montezuma's Castle and Other Weird Tales • Charles B. Cory
... no doubt some little trifle—a chip of wood, or bit of wire left hanging loose, which shakes about ...
— The Battery and the Boiler - Adventures in Laying of Submarine Electric Cables • R.M. Ballantyne
... Good! Good! You see, I was just a-wonderin'—you know, ha! ha!—goin' to get married and the rest—thought you might be unstrung, eh, a trifle?—nerves just a bit off, you know. Know how gettin' married is myself. But you're all right, eh? Of course you are. No use asking you that. Ha! ha! Well, good luck, my boy! I know you'll win. Never had the least ...
— The Game • Jack London
... wearing the beard, a little less of the stern moralist, a little more of the man of the world. A connoisseur of Hughes, who has studied him for nearly twenty years, after a recent observation, pronounced judgment: "It's the same Hughes, a trifle less cold, but just as dry." And the Secretary of State himself, when one of the weeklies contained an article on "The New Mr. Hughes," remarked, "People did not understand me then, that ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous
... gravely refer to this parable in order to prove that after a man's sins have been all freely forgiven by God, he may yet fall from grace, and the guilt of all his sins be laid upon him at the last, they waste their own time, and trifle with the scripture. True, in this picture you see one whose great debt was all freely forgiven by the master brought back into judgment, and made answerable for the whole amount; but this incidental feature of a human procedure will not bear the weight which men ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... romance, "The Flight of the Duchess," was born out of an insistent memory of this woman's snatch of song, heard in childhood. He was ten when, after several passions malheureuses, this precocious Lothario plunged into a love affair whose intensity was only equalled by its hopelessness. A trifle of fifteen years' seniority and a husband complicated matters, but it was not till after the reckless expenditure of a Horatian ode upon an unclassical mistress that he gave up hope. The outcome of this was what ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... local beyond. Whether the fleet is made up of two or ten lifts, there is always a man to control them, a station-master of lifts who gives the word to the liftboys. To the Englishman he is a new phenomenon. He seems a trifle unnecessary [but he may be put there by law]; he is soon seen to be one of a multitude of men in America who "stand over" other men while ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton
... mere trifle," said Sempronia, who had that moment returned—"We only desired to teach you how we Romans live in our ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 2 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... of one of the great stained windows, which seemed to glorify the whole group as well as the marble that they trod on. Most of them were men of broad foreheads, meditative countenances, and thoughtful, inward eyes; yet it required but a trifle to summon up mirth, peeping out from the very midst of grave and lofty musings. Some strode about, or leaned against the pillars of the hall, alone and in silence; their faces wore a rapt expression, as if sweet music ...
— The Hall of Fantasy (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the chief had suddenly left the Pathfinder and advanced to the water's edge, apparently with an intention of again entering the river. "He will not be so mad as to return to the other shore for any trifle he ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... for late in the winter of 1865, after many hardships and privations, we located the most remarkable gold-bearing quartz vein that our wildest dreams had ever pictured. Powell, who was a mining engineer by education, stated that we had uncovered over a million dollars worth of ore in a trifle ...
— A Princess of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... this is because of the manner in which a woodsman fells a tree. If he wants the tree to fall toward the west he marks the west side of the trunk; then he marks the top and bottom of the space he intends chopping out for the first kerf or notch (Fig. 13, A and B), making the length of space a trifle longer than one-half of the tree diameter. The kerf is chopped out by cutting first from the top A, then from the bottom B (Fig. 14). When the first kerf is finished and cut half-way through the tree, space for the kerf on the opposite side of the ...
— On the Trail - An Outdoor Book for Girls • Lina Beard and Adelia Belle Beard
... get some supplies and had a note left for me at the post-office," Miss Joyce mentioned, a trifle annoyed at herself because a blush insisted on flowing into her cheeks. "He says it's the biggest thing he ever saw, but it's going to be awf'ly hard to control. Where is that note? I must have ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine
... to Luna as the Miran settled heavily, and a trifle clumsily to Phobos. Miran radio-beams were forcing their way out toward the Miran station on Europa, to be relayed to the headquarters on Jupiter, just as Solarian radio beams were thrusting through space toward Luna. Said the Miran messages: "Their ships ...
— The Ultimate Weapon • John Wood Campbell
... a brown mare—led in by a halter. She was old and a trifle lame, and Chad, still undispirited, called out this time louder ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... going into the private office. "Just what the doctor ordered. Plenty of room, a better pair of show windows than we have here, and a long-time lease for a rent that's only a trifle more than ...
— Doubloons—and the Girl • John Maxwell Forbes
... "that you trifle not. The general is sick, and has many things on his mind; 'twill be ill for you if you disturb him ...
— Friends, though divided - A Tale of the Civil War • G. A. Henty
... had accumulated a mass of music that embraced every branch of the art. He had a growing reputation as a composer but no settled future. He had the post of concertmaster, it is true, but the salary was but a trifle and he was often pressed for money. Leopold therefore decided to undertake another professional tour with his son. The Archbishop however prevented the father leaving Salzburg. So the only course left open was to allow Wolfgang and his mother to travel together. ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... said Bill encouragingly, 'though you're a trifle husky in your undertones, which is no doubt due to the gravy in your innards. However, as a reward for bein' a bright little feller we shall have a slice of you all round before turnin' ...
— The Magic Pudding • Norman Lindsay
... you were about my wife's bonnet-box there's sixpence between us for you." "Oh, sur! I'm sure I didn't mean no unpurliteness. I 'opes you'll forget it; it was werry aggravising, certainly, but driv ye thirty miles. 'Opes you'll give a trifle more, thirty miles." "No, no, no more; so be off." "Please to remember the coachman, ma'am, thirty miles!" "Leaves ye here, sir, if you please; goes no further, sir; thirty miles, ma'am; all the vay ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... particular about the dress of people who come to see me, so that if you would just take the trouble to get you a tidy pattern of gingham or calico, or whatever you like of that sort for a gown, you would please me; and perhaps this little trifle will be a convenience to you when you ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... his thoughts; and he knew that Henry in return would give him his. On the present occasion, no sooner were they alone, and Henry began to utter them, than William charged him—"Not to dare to proceed; for that, too long accustomed to trifle, the time was come when serious matters could alone employ his time; and when men of approved sense must take place of friends ...
— Nature and Art • Mrs. Inchbald
... believed I could not procure more advantageous terms from any person than from you, who have so much distinguished yourself by your generous encouragement of poetry; and whose judgment of that art nothing but your commendation of my trifle[344] can give me any occasion to call in question. I do not doubt but you will look over this poem with another eye, and reward it in a different manner, from a mercenary bookseller, who counts the lines he is to purchase[345], and considers nothing but the bulk. I cannot help taking notice, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... gentleman allowed Madame to fasten the straps of Coristine's knapsack on his shoulders, while Pierre did the same for Wilkinson. The dominie had paid the bill the night before, as he objected to commercial transactions on Sunday, so there was nothing to do but to say good bye, bestow a trifle on Batiste and take to the road. The detective, after they had done half a mile's pleasant walking, took command of the expedition, and ordered The Cavalry, as Coristine called himself, to trot forward and ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... it was! Wrapped up in a bit of oiled paper, and in an envelope, sealed down and attested in my handwriting, Middlebrook—date and particulars of my discovery of it, all in order. Aye, and there was more. Letters and papers of my own, to be sure, and a trifle money—bank-notes. But there was yet another thing that, in view of all we know, may be a serious thing to have fall into the hands of ill-doers. A print, Middlebrook, of the enlarged photograph I got of the inside of the lid of ...
— Ravensdene Court • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... as long as I had anything to do with it," said Hogan. "I sold it out for a trifle and the next day the other man found a nugget. Wasn't that cursed ...
— Joe's Luck - Always Wide Awake • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... learned that the path that led to success was wide open: the competition was negligible. There was no jostling. In fact, travel on it was just a trifle lonely. One's fellow-travellers were excellent company, but they were few! It was one of Edward Bok's greatest surprises, but it was also one of his greatest stimulants. To go where others could not go, or were loath to go, where at least they were not, had a tang that savored ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok
... had had out in Wyoming; that the whole part had been cut clean out to suit the book to the infernal public schools, Saloonio's language being—at any rate, as the Colonel quoted it—undoubtedly a trifle free. Then the Colonel took to annotating his book at the side with such remarks as, "Enter Saloonio," or "A tucket sounds; enter Saloonio, on the arm of the Prince of Morocco." When there was no reasonable excuse for bringing Saloonio on the stage the Colonel ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock
... impressions. A dash of red for the painted brick walls, and of green for the mangers; a yellow blur for the mote-filled rays of sunshine streaming through the cows' white-curtained windows, and on the flower-pots adorning their window-sills; a trifle more elaboration for the carpet of sawdust stamped with an ornamental pattern, and the quaint design of the cupboard-beds for the stablemen in the wall opposite; a streak here and there for the cords which loop the cows' tails to nails in the ceiling; gorgeous ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... of the great city, Augustin well knew that he had not been sent there to amuse himself, or to trifle as an amateur with philosophy. He was poor, and he had to secure his future—make his fortune. His family counted on him. Neither was he ignorant of the difficult position of his parents and by what sacrifices they had supplied him with the means to finish his studies. Necessarily he was obliged ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... Jargon, he comes and rubs the Patient in some part of his Body, and pulling some little Bones out of his Mouth, acquaints the Patient, That these very Bones came out of his Body; that he ought to pluck up a good heart, in regard that his Distemper is but a Trifle; and in fine, that in order to accelerate the Cure, 't will be convenient to send his own and his Relations Slaves to shoot Elks, Deer, &c., to the end they may all eat of that sort of Meat, upon which his Cure does ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various
... currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God. The name of the nearest friend sounds there foreign and accidental; to be brothers, to be acquaintances—master or servant, is then a trifle and a disturbance. I am the lover of uncontained and immortal beauty. In the wilderness I find something more dear and connate than in streets or villages. In the tranquil landscape, and especially in the distant line of the horizon, man beholds ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... smile on perusing this epistle, deeming it, perhaps, a trifle flowery in expression—but, Euan, I am so torn between the wild passion I entertain for you, and a desire to address you modestly and politely in terms of correspondence, as taught in the best schools, that I know not entirely how to conduct. I would not have you think me cold, or too stiffly ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... yet, madam, if your daughter has the wisdom to see that the matter of her wealth is after all but a trifle amongst the conditions which make for happiness, why should you deny her the ...
— Jeanne of the Marshes • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... father." Pecquius asked whether in his conscience the Secretary of State believed it right or reasonable to make war for such a cause. Villeroy replied by asking "whether even admitting the negative, the Ambassador thought it were wisely done for such a trifle, for a formality, to plunge into extremities and to turn all Christendom upside down." Pecquius, not considering honour a trifle or a formality, said that "for nothing in the world would his Highness the Archduke descend to a cowardly action or to anything that ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... affair this evening, which has been labor well bestowed, in the opinion of these gentlemen, merely to wind up by asking you for enough to go and drink red wine at fifteen sous and eat veal at Desnoyer's. Two hundred thousand francs—it's surely worth all that. This trifle once out of your pocket, I guarantee you that that's the end of the matter, and that you have no further demands to fear. You will say to me: 'But I haven't two hundred thousand francs about me.' Oh! I'm not extortionate. I don't demand that. I only ask one thing of you. Have the goodness ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... sore straits, Dr. Zockler is able to do, is to pronounce a faint commendation upon a particularly absurd attempt at reconciliation, which would make out the Noachian Deluge to be a catastrophe which occurred at the end of the Glacial Epoch. This hypothesis involves only the trifle of a physical revolution of which geology knows nothing; and which, if it secured the accuracy of the Pentateuchal writer about the fact of the Deluge, would leave the details of his account as irreconcilable with the truths of elementary physical science as ever. Thus I may be permitted ...
— The Lights of the Church and the Light of Science - Essay #6 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition" • Thomas Henry Huxley
... little on the way things ran about among the plantations. It was a point of honor among the black men to have wives or sweethearts away from home. This meant running about nightly—consequently cross-currents of gossip lively enough to make the yellowest journal turn green with envy. Mammy was a trifle apologetic over having a husband no further off than the next neighbor's. To make up for it, however, the husbands who came to his house lived from three to five miles away—and one of them worked at the mill, hence was a veritable human chronicle. Thus ...
— Dishes & Beverages of the Old South • Martha McCulloch Williams
... yourself in my fame and character as a poet, I rejoice in; it exalts me in my own idea; and whether you can or cannot aid me in my subscription is a trifle. Has a paltry subscription-bill any charms to the heart of a bard, compared with the patronage of the ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... late Mr. Baron Bolland, consisting of 2940 articles, brought a trifle more than a guinea per article. It was choice, curious, and instructively miscellaneous. Its owner was a man of taste as well as a scholar; and the crabbed niceties of his profession had neither chilled his heart nor clouded ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... I felt a trifle uneasy at this speech. There seemed to be a suggestion in it that I could end the whole matter by marching on my enemies, and coming to decisive battle. I wished I knew what she was hinting at, and how it was to be done, before ...
— Blindfolded • Earle Ashley Walcott
... "Arcadia." It was never finished. Much was written at Wilton in the summer of 1580, the rest in 1581, written, as he said in a letter to her, "only for you, only to you . . . for severer eyes it is not, being but a trifle, triflingly handled. Your dear self can best witness the manner, being done in loose sheets of paper, most of it in your presence, the rest by sheets sent unto you as fast as they were done." He never meant that it should be published; indeed, when dying he ...
— A Defence of Poesie and Poems • Philip Sidney
... stood six feet high and had curiously broad, square shoulders; but his imposing torso was ill supported. His legs were very thin and long, and they turned out a trifle. With his prominent nose, small head, and bright little slate-grey eyes, he looked rather like a stork. He was rheumatic, ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts
... the poor man rest quietly, and here is a trifle for your trouble." So saying, she slipped a weighty purse ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... having subsided, the hapless city, that two thirds of her children have abandoned for ever, becomes feeble, empty, moribund; like a body from which the blood has been drained. Some thousands of bees have remained, however; and these, though a trifle languid perhaps, are still immovably faithful to the duty a precise destiny has laid upon them, still conscious of the part that they have themselves to play; they resume their labours, therefore, fill as best they can the place of those who have ...
— The Life of the Bee • Maurice Maeterlinck
... steamer would dock about daylight the following morning. When Hollister offered to see her ashore and to her destination, she accepted without any reservations. It comforted Hollister's sadly bruised ego to observe that she even seemed a trifle pleased. ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... of travelers and visitors, Washington never appeared to be a brilliant man. He was always a trifle reserved, and this habit grew on him with years. His methods of work were homely and painstaking, reminding us somewhat of Lincoln; and the laborious carefulness of his military plans seemed to European critics to ...
— Washington's Birthday • Various
... been all along with her, his honour, Sir Kit, would have been now alive in all appearance. Her diamond cross was, they say, at the bottom of it all; and it was a shame for her, being his wife, not to show more duty, and to have given it up when he condescended to ask so often for such a bit of a trifle in his distresses, especially when he all along made it no secret he married for money. But we will not bestow another thought upon her. This much I thought it lay upon my conscience to say, in justice to my ...
— Castle Rackrent • Maria Edgeworth
... the beautifully formed bust, the slender waist, and the noble carriage that even young Hungarian girls frequently have. Perhaps the face, with its intellectual forehead and the proud and firmly cut mouth, was a trifle too calm and self-reliant for a young girl: but all the softness of expression that was wanted, all the gentle and gracious timidity that we associate with maidenhood, lay in the large, and dark, and lustrous eyes. When, by accident, she turned aside, and he saw the outline of that clear, olive-complexioned ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... detail of handling the guns with which we were not acquainted, and thoroughly so, and I had the honor of being in charge of my gun, due to the accuracy in my work. I think my chest expansion increased a trifle, but my cap did not ...
— S.O.S. Stand to! • Reginald Grant
... in the night mutch was the only one of us who seemed unaffected by the extraordinary events we had just witnessed. Her eyes gleamed a trifle more brightly than before. That ...
— Border Ghost Stories • Howard Pease
... is the one with the other; work for He works: there were no working at all to any purpose, or with any hope, if He did not work. And work with fear and trembling, for He works of His own good pleasure, q.d., "'Twere the greatest folly imaginable to trifle with One that works at so perfect liberty, under no obligation, that may desist when He will; to impose upon so absolutely sovereign and arbitrary an Agent, that owes you nothing; and from whose former gracious operations not complied with you ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Vol. 2 (of 10) • Grenville Kleiser
... other day two young ladies were heard discussing a gentleman who had a great many pleasant qualities. "Yes," said one, "he is very handsome, but he does eat pie with his knife." Take care that no trifle of that kind is recalled when people ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, January 1878, No. 3 • Various
... to wait for any one, else I 'd lose my chance of a hack; so I gave my check to a man, and there he is with my trunk;" and Polly walked off after her one modest piece of baggage, followed by Tom, who felt a trifle depressed by his own remissness in polite attentions. "She is n't a bit of a young lady, thank goodness! Fan did n't tell me she was pretty. Don't look like city girls, nor act like 'em, neither," he thought, trudging ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott
... you'd know as much as these gentlemen, and I wouldn't have to sing an encore. Well, here's what it is: simply of the remaining treasure of the Berne bears, which General Lecourbe is sending to the citizen First Consul by order of General Massena. A trifle, only a hundred thousand francs, that they don't dare send over the Jura on account of M. Teysonnet's partisans, who, they pretend, are likely to seize it; so it will be sent by Geneva, Bourg, Macon, Dijon, and Troyes; a much safer way, as they will ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... business, which is, indeed, that of a clerk in the mercantile profession. Nevertheless, I have every inclination to help thee, though I trust thou mayest have magnified the dangers that beset thee. This appears to me to be a little trifle for such an ado; nevertheless, I will do as thou dost request. I will keep it in safety and will return it to thee upon this day a week hence, by which time I hope to have discharged my cargo and be ready to continue my ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle
... well hear the reasons for your expert opinion," he said, his satire a trifle hoarse after ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... clothes and food. The former consists of a shirt and short trousers of coarse check cotton, a soldier's old great-coat for winter, and plenty of mealy-meal for "scoff." If he is a good servant and worth making comfortable, you give him a trifle every week to buy meat. Kafirs are very fond of going to their kraals, and you have to make them sign an agreement to remain with you so many months, generally six. By the time you have just taught them, with infinite pains and trouble, how to do their work, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... unsurpassed. Try it and be convinced. This powder is composed of the very best and purest substances, and therefore is perfectly wholesome. Any lady can prepare enough in a few minutes to last her six months. It will only cost a trifle—not one-quarter of what you would have to pay your grocer for ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous
... true as Sally Grimes? Every morning before setting off for the City she comes, anxiously asking, "How's Pollie?" and on her return, her first care is to inquire for her little sick friend, bringing with her a few flowers, if she has any left in the basket, or some other trifle, precious, though, to the grateful recipient, whose white lips smile gratefully at the kind Sally ...
— Little Pollie - A Bunch of Violets • Gertrude P. Dyer
... dared avow, till his eyes at length opened themselves too late to its culpable nature. His mind, of that high-wrought and desponding tone which often characterizes extraordinary genius, and too sincere to trifle with impunity, struggled then fruitlessly against a fatality formerly imagined, but become real; and the flower of his life was passed amid illusions and conflicts, in alternate self-deception and self-reproach, in wild and beautiful visions ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... drums and make shoes; and if they are very poor, they wander from house to house, working as cobblers, mending old shoes and leather, and so earn a scanty livelihood. Besides this, their daughters and young married women gain a trifle as wandering minstrels, called Torioi, playing on the shamisen, a sort of banjo, and singing ballads. They never marry out of their own fraternity, but remain apart, a ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... ever be as simple as this. Battle within battle must be continually recurring with varying success; and yet in the long run the forces are so nicely balanced that the face of nature remains for long periods of time uniform, though assuredly the merest trifle would give the victory to one organic being over another. Nevertheless, so profound is our ignorance and so high our presumption, that we marvel when we hear of the extinction of an organic being; and as we do not see the cause, we invoke cataclysms to desolate the world, or invent laws ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... engaged with the heat, the prospect, the oranges, and the soldiers' wives and children, who peeped out from windows here and there. Such trifling creatures do come into such massive surroundings, and trifle still! ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... they do? They hand you back your note of hand torn up, with all the air of being very glad to have served you. Then, after all, you turn your back on an undertaking in which they have embarked their whole fortunes: an affair of a couple of millions is a trifle unworthy of the attention of a philosopher like you.... But that is not all. You have a fancy for collecting together different pieces scattered through the Encyclopaedia; nothing can be more opposed ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... care of that. Come, give me your arm. The boy can stay here and take care of it, and I'll come back and finish the washing; that's only a trifle." ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... me hear such words again. Full well I know that the policy of statesmen rarely maintains truth and fidelity; that it excludes from the heart candour, charity, toleration. In secular affairs, this is, alas! only too true; but shall we trifle with God as we do with each other? Shall we be indifferent to our established faith, for the sake of which so many have sacrificed their lives? Shall we abandon it to these far-fetched, uncertain, ...
— Egmont - A Tragedy In Five Acts • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... the other side of the road. She had taken wing and flown from the nest. She was no longer a child: she was a personage. I found myself trying (a little clumsily) to adapt my conversation to her new status, and when I left her I raised my hat a trifle more elaborately ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... about the size of a rabbit, heavier perhaps, more compact, and with much shorter legs. In appearance, it resembles the ground-hog of the north, although a trifle smaller than that animal. In their habits, the prairie dogs are social, never live alone like other animals, but are always found in villages or large settlements. They are a wild, frolicksome set of fellows ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... like brothers—entertaining each other by the relation of their adventures, to a late hour of the night; singing, chatting, laughing, and almost crying together; making common cause against me; Brown even following Charley into his banishment—quarrelled yesterday, about a mere trifle, so violently that it will be some time before they become friends again. When Mr. Calvert and Brown returned yesterday to the camp, they remarked that they had not seen the waterfall, of which Charley had spoken whilst at our last camp; upon which Charley insinuated that they had ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt
... a stone here, Juanna, and it may not be a real ruby after all. Perhaps Wallace might be willing to advance me a trifle on it, though I ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... and the summer of the year, I came one afternoon to a point which gave me the choice of three directions. Straight before me, the main road extended its dusty length to Boston; on the left a branch went towards the sea, and would have lengthened my journey a trifle of twenty or thirty miles; while by the right-hand path, I might have gone over hills and lakes to Canada, visiting in my way the celebrated town of Stamford. On a level spot of grass, at the foot of the guidepost, appeared an object, which, though locomotive ...
— The Seven Vagabonds (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... was a girl of about twenty-two, tall, well-formed, and broad-shouldered. Her features were not very regular; she had black eyes, a straight forehead, a trifle too broad, dark eyebrows strongly accented, a Roman nose, and full glowing lips. Her eyes had a deep expression indicating an introspective nature; her lips were tightly drawn together in what seemed to be a semblance of dignity or hidden temper. Two deep lines clouded ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont
... visible to its extremest point clasping the bay in its arms. The bay itself is the tenderest blue-green, and on the rolling plain which borders it lies intense sunlight chequered with moving shadows which wander eastwards. The wind has shifted a trifle, and comes straight up the Channel from ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford
... the shape of a modest chap In fustian trousers and greasy cap; A trifle stolid, and something gruff, Yet, though unpolished, of sturdy stuff. With grave grey eyes, and a knitted brow, The glare of sun and the gleam of snow Those eyes have stared on this many a year. The crow's-feet gather in mazes queer About their corners most apt ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, October 4, 1890 • Various
... King Charles II. fifty pounds on the credit of his word or bond, after the shutting up the Exchequer? The royal word was made a jest of, and the character of the king was esteemed a fluttering trifle, which no man would venture upon, much less ...
— The Complete English Tradesman (1839 ed.) • Daniel Defoe
... credit; and the lynxes of Angouleme practically took a twelvemonth, though tall Cointet would say month by month to the lynxes' jackal, "Do you want any money, Doublon?" Nor was this all. Doublon gave the influential house a rebate upon every transaction; it was the merest trifle, one franc fifty centimes on ...
— Eve and David • Honore de Balzac
... a dozen places with an ice-axe and set fire to it. The petrol blazed fiercely under the five-gallon drum we used as a cooker, and the hot milk was ready in quick time. Then we three ministering angels went round the tents with the life-giving drink, and were surprised and a trifle chagrined at the matter-of-fact manner in which some of the men accepted this contribution to their comfort. They did not quite understand what work we had done for them in the early dawn, and I heard Wild say, "If any of you gentlemen would like your boots cleaned just put them outside." ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... she continued, "and your sweetheart loves you dearly. You saw her this morning, and you would give a trifle to know where she will be to-morrow. You traveled with her last night and didn't know it—and the business that brought ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... cross, and the detective had to be careful. He knew well enough that next morning, when sober, Jessop would not be so disposed to talk, but being muzzy, he opened his heart freely. Still, it was evident that a trifle more liquor would make him quarrelsome, so Hurd proposed coffee, a proposition to which the ...
— The Opal Serpent • Fergus Hume
... his best Generals.] Yet the King out of the height of his Stomach, seemed not in the least to be vexed thereat, neither did he regard it; as if it were beneath the quality of such a Monarch to be moved with such a Trifle. But sent down another General in his place; And as for the house and estate of him that Fled, and whatsoever he left behind him, he let it lye and rot, scorning ...
— An Historical Relation Of The Island Ceylon In The East Indies • Robert Knox
... all sides by rival journals of a more modern type, it was continually in danger of collapse. Twenty years ago its subscription list contained but a few hundred thousand names, and then Mr. Fritz Napoleon Smith bought it for a mere trifle, and originated telephonic journalism. ...
— In the Year 2889 • Jules Verne and Michel Verne
... for a mere trifle embarrass the woman for whom he professed the most unlimited love, and whose principles he pretended to hold in the utmost veneration. Indeed, his confidence in my integrity was not without foundation; for many wives, with one half of my provocation, would have ruined him to all intents ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... drawing-room, with his arm round her waist, saying now and then some little soft words of affection, and working hard with his imaginary little fiddle-bow, when Mr Arabin entered the room. He immediately got up, and the two made some trifle remarks to each other, neither thinking of what he was saying, and Eleanor kept her seat on the sofa mute and moody. Mr Arabin was included in the list of those against whom her anger was excited. He, too, had dared to talk about her acquaintance with Mr Slope; he, ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... and faces of the contemporaries of Shakespeare, to the conventional costumes, the rotund expression, of the age of the Georges, masking a power of imaginative impersonation probably unknown in Shakespeare's day. Edward Burbage, like Shakespeare's own portrait, is, we venture to think, a trifle stolid. Field—Nathaniel Field, author of The Fatal Dowry, and an actor of reputation—in his singular costume, and with a face of perhaps not quite reassuring subtlety, might pass for the original of those Italian, or Italianized, voluptuaries in sin which pleased the ...
— Essays from 'The Guardian' • Walter Horatio Pater
... morning, however, he was seated at the table, directly across from Hugh, a trifle pale and far from hungry. He was making a brave effort to conquer the sickness which had seized him. She nudged Hugh and nodded toward the quiet, subdued eater. He looked across and then gave her a questioning glance. She ...
— Nedra • George Barr McCutcheon
... urging him to go on with his play. Mr. Browning has used it to indicate the comparative unimportance of his contribution to the Cenci story. The quoted Italian proverb means something to the same effect: that every trifle will press in for notice ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... Mr. Martel put an end to the discussion of the Bartletts. Bitter as was his animosity toward the old lady, he would permit no disrespect to be shown her or hers in his presence. In the garish light of day he looked a trifle less imposing than he had on New Year's eve in the firelight. His long white hair hung straight and dry about his face; baggy wrinkles sagged under his eyes and under his chin. The shoulders that once ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... you will have no voice in this matter;" and the miner's tone grew a trifle more severe. "Knew you the bitter wrong done me by this young devil with the smooth face and oily tongue—if you knew what a righteous cause I have to defend, you would say 'let the battle proceed.' I am not one to thirst for the blood of my fellow-men, but I am one that is ever ready to ...
— Deadwood Dick, The Prince of the Road - or, The Black Rider of the Black Hills • Edward L. Wheeler
... cunning little wooden stool, close to the fireplace, and kept her small chapped hands persistently over her face; she was scared, and grieved, and, withal, a trifle sulky. Mrs. Polly Wales cooked some Indian meal mush for supper in an iron pot swinging from its trammel over the blazing logs, and cast scrutinizing glances at the little stranger. She had welcomed her kindly, taken off her outer garments, and established her ...
— The Pot of Gold - And Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins
... far as was possible under the existing conditions of wind and sea, we bore up and shaped a course for Cape la Hague, which we made just before nightfall. Then, as the breeze seemed inclined to freshen a trifle, rendering the ship more manageable in the strong tides that sweep that part of the coast, the Captain determined to search the bight at the bottom of which lies the French port of Saint Malo, just then notorious for the ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... handsomely decapitated one. This was a temptation to my constancy; appetite and conscientiousness had a long strife as to the disposal of the booty. I reflected that it would be but an inconsiderable trifle to the mess of four hungry men, while to roast and eat him myself would give me strength to hunt for more. A strong inward feeling remonstrated against such an invasion of the rights of my starving messmates; but if, by fortifying myself, I gained ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... something, however, about him which might be termed interesting, something a trifle different from his neighbors. Even his clothes had that slight difference that hardly can ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... would forget her reserve in great joy, and low, pleased laughter would jet from her throat.... And if he were on time, there would be the quiet grave confidence: "I knew your step!" ... And if he were late, there would be the passing of the cloud from the brows: "Thank God! I—I was—just a trifle worried!" ... And the greetings over, she would look at him with a smile and a little lift of the eyebrows, and he would give her what he had brought from the voyage: a ring from Amsterdam, maybe, where ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... with many parting grasps of the hand on the platform, that he would certainly be brought in at the top of the poll. Another little incident should be mentioned. He had been asked by the electioneering agent for a small trifle of some hundred pounds towards the expenses, and this, by the generosity of his father, he had been able to give. "We shall get along now like a house on fire," said the agent, as he pocketed the cheque. ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... the succeeding weeks under the men shipped in; in material used, in cubic yards of concrete construction, and in percentage of work finished. Examine them if you please. They show daily and weekly results to be just a trifle less than double for the corresponding time the imported workmen have been here. In other words, the new men have, while shortening the time of completion, given twice as much work for exactly the same wage paid your Mexicans. In other words, too, your local laborers ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd
... that's all I said. And I did not thank them for the offer; and then they laughed more than ever. I wish Washington would drive them out of Philadelphia," answered Gilbert, who was a trifle disappointed that the Englishmen had not taken his play more seriously. He would not have minded if he had been held as a prisoner for a few days; it would have made him feel that he had really done something to prove his loyalty ...
— A Little Maid of Old Philadelphia • Alice Turner Curtis
... boy! how are you? And this is your little 'prop'? your quarter-section, your country-seat, that we've been trespassing on, eh? A nice little spot, cool, sequestered, remote,—a trifle unimproved; carriage-road as yet unfinished. Ha, ha! But to think of our making a discovery of this inaccessible mountain, climbing it, sir, for two mortal hours, christening it 'Sol's Peak,' getting ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... to dismiss the matter from her mind. It persisted in recurring to her at intervals, and when, at exactly half-past seven o'clock, Alberta Wicks was ushered into the living room, Grace's heart beat a trifle faster as she went forward to greet her guest, who looked less haughty than usual, and who actually smiled faintly as she ...
— Grace Harlowe's Third Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... must not be angry with me for leaving this trifle—it is a trifle compared with the amount of gold I would give you if I had it. But I need not apologise; the spirit of love in which it is given demands that it shall be unhesitatingly received in the same spirit. May God, ...
— The Golden Dream - Adventures in the Far West • R.M. Ballantyne
... to the Cafe Mulhouse on the Boulevard des Italiens (on the "Boul. des It.," as we called it, to be in the fashion)—that we might gaze at Senor Joaquin Eliezegui, the Spanish giant, who was eight feet high and a trifle over (or under—I forget which): he told us himself. Barty had a passion for gazing at very tall men; like Frederic the Great (or was it his ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... enough. This, says Capt. Sueter, was apparently the only reason for de Son's failure, for his principles were distinctly sound, and he was certainly the first inventor of the mechanically propelled semi-submarine boat. After her failure de Son exhibited her for a trifle to ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... fault of such Who still are pleased, too little or too much. At every trifle scorn to take offence: That always shows great pride or little sense; Those heads, as stomachs, are not sure the best Which nauseate all, and nothing can digest. Yet let not each gay turn thy rapture move, 390 For fools admire, but men of sense approve: ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... time the hawk-eyes were looking into Mr. Belcher. All the time the scalp was moving backward and forward, as if he had just procured a new one, that might be filled up before night, but for the moment was a trifle large. All the time there was a subtle scorn upon the lips, the flavor of which the finely curved nose ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... order that the rest of the tale might keep you guessing which of the three had (so to speak) belled the cat. Followers of Mrs. LOWNDES will indeed have been anticipating poor Godfrey's demise for some time, and may perhaps think that she takes a trifle too long over her arrangements for the event. They will almost certainly share my view that the explanation of the mystery is far too involved and unintelligible. I shall, of course, not anticipate this for you. It has been said that the works of HOMER were not written by HOMER himself, but ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, October 31, 1917 • Various
... which we, with our numerous sins, still heaped up here daily, beyond measure, have not deserved. We are also in the highest degree beholden to the Indians, who not only have given up to us this good and fruitful country, and for a trifle yielded us the ownership, but also enrich us with their good and reciprocal trade, so that there is no one in New Netherland or who trades to New Netherland without obligation to them. Great is our disgrace now, and happy should we have been, had we acknowledged these benefits as we ought, and had ...
— Narrative of New Netherland • Various
... but the other was in a great rage and said, "You are a most insolent mask, and I do not know what will restrain me from giving you a good beating."—"As to a good beating;" replied the mask, "I can do a trifle in that way myself when necessary; and as for the insolence of which you accuse me, it is sufficient for me to say that I am masked." He went away as he said this, and ...
— The Memoirs of the Louis XIV. and The Regency, Complete • Elizabeth-Charlotte, Duchesse d'Orleans
... not yon weary voyage for the sake of quarreling with thee. Well dost thou know, cousin, I would not trifle with any man, and I begged the governor to enforce out of his own mouth the no-say that I worded gently, for truly there is no reason for me to flout the gentleman. How could he honor me more than to ask ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... water. The patient took it with docility, and began to drink it with resignation; but stopping short at the first mouthful, he handed back the glass to his wife. "Take it, my dear," said he, "and keep it for another time; I have always heard it said that we should not trifle with remedies." ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... some family unsettled claim from which the two brothers might, or might not, obtain some small sums of money. Sir Lionel, when much pressed by the city Croesus, had begged him to look to this claim, and pay himself from the funds which would be therefrom accruing. The city Croesus had done so: a trifle of two or three hundred pounds had fallen to Sir Lionel's lot, and had of course been duly credited to his account. But it went a very little way towards squaring matters, and the old man of business went on sending his ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... description, for I learn Miss Sally Salisbury is now in Paris, and it is probable that her niece and nephew (my son) have joined her or committed the jewels to her good offices. I am ashamed to give your Ladyship such trouble about this trifle, yet beg your obliging enquiries in the Rue des Moineaux or where else your Lord may suggest. But by all means keep it from Horace Walpole. I want not his bitter tongue to lick my sores. 'Tis of course ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... 'That is a trifle, sir,' Trombin said. 'We have not quite finished, and if you will join us we shall be delighted to begin again from the beginning. A clean cloth, Markos,' he went on at once, turning to the host, 'and the same dishes ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... it for granted they would have it, but their slighting is one inconvenience to such as desire it, not knowing when it is provided, conversation may carry them beyond the time, and then if they do trifle over the coffee it will certainly be cold. There is a want of attention in this, which the ladies should remedy, if they will not break the old custom and send to the gentlemen, which is what they ought to do, they certainly should have a salver fresh. ...
— A Tour in Ireland - 1776-1779 • Arthur Young
... stateliness itself, and we were not surprised to see the coroner look a trifle baffled; but, recovering himself, ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green
... awaken from such a dream of felicity to comprehend all the unhappy truths which attended the affair; and for some time she refused to submit to them. As to an additional servant, the expense would be a trifle; Mamma she was sure would never object to it; and any horse would do for him; he might always get one at the park; as to a stable, the merest shed would be sufficient. Elinor then ventured to doubt the propriety ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... of his family, without return; for the customers, after playing off this cruel joke upon the old man, had never come back; and now, for seven years, the bottle had stood in a corner of the cupboard. To be sure, the silver-cased bottle was worth a trifle for its silver, and still more, perhaps, as an antiquarian knick- knack. But, all things considered, the honest and simple apothecary thought that he might make free with the liquid to such small extent as was necessary for himself. And there had been something in the concoction that had ...
— The Dolliver Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... perch, jack, eels, and a great variety of others; above all, in sturgeon; which are frequently caught by accident in the shad-nets, and either boiled for their oil, or suffered to rot on the, shores, being very seldom sent to market: when this is the case, they are sold for a mere trifle, chiefly to emigrants. The Americans have conceived a violent antipathy to this fish. I recollect no instance of seeing it at their tables. They have every externals appearance of the european sturgeon, but in other respects must be very different, or the Americans ...
— Travels in the United States of America • William Priest
... the prelude, it is a strong, simple melody, made on the intervals of the diatonic scale, square-cut in rhythm, firm and dignified, and, like the mastersingers, complacent and a trifle pompous in stride. The three melodies which are presented in opposition to the spirit represented by the mastersingers and their typical music, are disclosed by a study of the comedy to be associated with ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... purpose for which a British tribunal sits here, to furnish a subject for an epigram, or a tale for the laughter of the world? Believe me, my Lords, the world is not to be thus trifled with. But, my Lords, you will never trifle with your duty. You have a gross, horrid piece of corruption before you,—impudently confessed, and more impudently defended. But you will not suffer Mr. Hastings to say, "I have only to go to Moorshedabad, or to order the Nabob ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XII. (of XII.) • Edmund Burke
... He knew he had reasoned well. The guests in the banquet-room began to emerge, talking and laughing. The voice of Nechutes was not heard among them. Kenkenes glanced toward the group and saw the cup-bearer a trifle in advance, his sullen ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... though the foolish girl had been at such trouble to make herself attractive. The mention of clouds and rain brought back Mabel's thoughts to the delicate frock and the new hat. She and Clara were a little in advance of their aunt, who had stopped for a moment to place a trifle in Mr. Newlove's hand for a very poor parishioner of his, of ...
— Aunt Mary • Mrs. Perring
... work, in which we assisted, produced something a trifle more nautical and seaworthy than the first craft. The ground with a few boards spread upon it was the deck. Tarpaulin sheets were arranged on sticks to represent sails, and we located the vessel so cleverly that two slender trees shot out of the ...
— Penelope's Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... is a place where words must speak for themselves without comment of inflection, gesture of the hand, or interpreting smile. Here to be unaffected one must take thought. As on the stage a natural hue must be obtained by unnatural means, so in the writing of letters one must a trifle overdo in order to do but ordinarily. A word which rings on the lips with frank cordiality will stare coldly from the written page and must be heightened to avoid offense. This is a license requiring the exercise of moderation and the utmost tact. Not all expressions ...
— A Williams Anthology - A Collection of the Verse and Prose of Williams College, 1798-1910 • Compiled by Edwin Partridge Lehman and Julian Park
... world. Men who wrote or drew prettily for the public came at times to their house, and his editor came very often. He thought him rather an ass because he had such big front teeth (the proper thing is to have small, even teeth) and wore his hair a trifle longer than most men do. However, some dukes wear their hair long, and the fellow indubitably knew his business. The worst was that his gravity, though perfectly portentous, could not be trusted. He sat, elegant and bulky, in the drawing-room, the head of his ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... for Effie. Enter the hero. Webster defines a hero in romance as the person who has the principal share in the transactions related. He says nothing which would debar a gentleman just because he may be a trifle bald and in the habit of combing his hair over the thin spot, and he raises no objections to a matter of thickness and color in the region of the back of the neck. Therefore Gabe I. Marks qualifies. Gabe was the gentleman ...
— Buttered Side Down • Edna Ferber
... "Ah! indeed, a trifle only; some twelve, or perhaps fourteen pounds." Sanders gave a chuckle, and puffed away at ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... reassured him. "Let's see, it's Tuesday, isn't it? I call him Boko. He never leaves me. My week-end shadowers are a trifle less assiduous, but Boko is suspicious. He ...
— The Double Traitor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... pair (corresponding to the interval between the scuta and terga) is only a trifle larger than the latera immediately beneath; and these only a little larger than those lower down. In the lowest whorl, the valves are very minute, though still about twice as large as the scales on the peduncle, and of a different shape from them. The upper latera ...
— A Monograph on the Sub-class Cirripedia (Volume 1 of 2) - The Lepadidae; or, Pedunculated Cirripedes • Charles Darwin
... "No" which he snapped at her was a trifle more emphatic than the circumstances seemed to warrant, nor could she help but notice after he had entered his office the vehement manner in which ...
— The Efficiency Expert • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... by a lease, granted in 1760, at a rent of only L36. This lease had been renewed in 1815, nine years after its expiration, at a rent of L2,060; but it was still too low, as the estimated value was L3,500. The pecuniary loss was therefore well worthy of attention: but this was a trifle compared to the political purposes to which the property had been applied. The noble lessee never gave a lease for more than one year, in order to keep the voters under his power; and the petition stated the manner in which this power had been employed. If the allegations were true, the house was ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... possessions that she gave. The word of Jesus about her and her gift has no possible comfort for us if our little is not our best. The widow's mites were her best, small though the money value was—she gave all she had. The poor woman's cup of cold water was all she could give. But if we give only a trifle out of our abundance, we are not ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... then produces a lucky trifle. We still read the Dove of Anacreon, and Sparrow of Catullus; and a writer naturally pleases himself with a performance, which owes nothing to the subject. But compositions merely pretty have the fate of other pretty things, and are quitted ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... of us who knew the value of musical degrees, the means by which they are obtained, and the reasons for which they are conferred, yet served a useful purpose by calling public attention to the fact that there was living a man who had written music that was fresh, a trifle strange perhaps, but full of vitality, and containing a new throb, a new thrill. Since 1893 his reputation has steadily grown, but in a curious way. One can scarcely say with truth that Tschaikowsky is popular: only ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... great indifference to such a trifle, that it might be forgotten; but, inwardly, I was serious. Moreover, what I had said made no impression on Edwarda. She did not try to hide anything, to smooth over the effect of her hasty action: on ...
— Pan • Knut Hamsun
... you had been dumb rather than that you had mentioned it now," said Mowbray, starting, as if stung by an adder—"What, Clara's pittance!—the trifle my aunt left her for her own fanciful expenses—her own little private store, that she puts to so many good purposes—Poor Clara, that has so little!—And why not rather your own, Master Meiklewham, who call yourself the friend and servant of ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... him. I thought this chance reference to the distinguishing feature of William's narrative curious enough, and my husband agreed with me. But he says it is scarcely worth while to mention such a trifle in anything so important as a book. I cannot venture, after this, to do more than slip these lines in modestly at the end of the story. If the printer should notice my few last words, perhaps he may not mind the trouble of putting them into some out-of-the-way ...
— Stories By English Authors: France • Various
... for bees'-wax. They are all armed with Portuguese guns, and have cartridges with iron balls. When we meet we usually stand a few minutes. They present a little salt, and we give a bit of ox-hide, or some other trifle, and then part with mutual good wishes. The hide of the oxen we slaughtered had been a valuable addition to our resources, for we found it in so great repute for girdles all through Loanda that we cut up every skin into ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... have to acknowledge, for I didn't like the look of things. That they were in earnest I felt pretty certain, for I understood now why they had let my companions out of jail. They knew that angry cowboys were a trifle undiscriminating, and didn't care to risk hanging more ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... at home she would have avoided Warrington, no matter how deeply sorry she might have been. His insistent warning against himself, however, served to arouse nothing more than a subtle obstinacy to do just as she pleased. And it pleased her to talk to him; it pleased her to trifle with the ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath
... they had been your children; you saved them a thousand francs a year—' (for there are plenty, sir, you know, that would have had their ten thousand francs put out to interest by now if they had been in my place)—'so if the worthy gentleman leaves you a trifle of an annuity, it is only right.'—Suppose they told me that. Well, now; I am not thinking of myself.—I cannot think how some women can do a kindness thinking of themselves all the time. It is not doing good, sir, is it? I do not go to church myself, ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... the Gascon with a sneer. "These are not hired slaves, but free companions, who will do nothing save by their own good wills. In very sooth, my Lord Loring, they are ill men to trifle with, and it were easier to pluck a bone from a hungry bear than to lead a bowman out of a land of plenty and ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... subdued at the present time, but a trifle of the professional "soothiness" was lacking. He and Mrs. Hobbs were conversing briskly enough and, although Mary-'Gusta could catch only a word or two at intervals, she was perfectly sure they were talking about her. She was certain that if she were to appear at that moment in the door of the ...
— Mary-'Gusta • Joseph C. Lincoln
... too, and had to start in all over again. Well, sir—I beg your pardon, ma'am, or I should rather say miss—that was pretty much the way things was when I quit home, and that was pretty much the way I expected to find 'em when I come back. It didn't seem as if a trifle of fifteen years was going to make much difference in Ma Sill, nor yet in Sam and Sim; they seemed sort of permanent, don't you know, like the old well-sweep, or the big willows. I s'pose when Ma was laid away the boys commenced to feel as if they was two minds as well as two bodies. ...
— The Wooing of Calvin Parks • Laura E. Richards
... shuffled miserably from one foot to the other, until he noticed that she was looking at him with a glance that was entirely dignified yet very friendly. It had an oddly sympathetic quality in it as well. His spirits rose a trifle. ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan
... Berengaria. I am mistaken if you do not hear of it. It is very cynical, which authors, who know a little of the world, are apt to be, and everything is exaggerated, which is another of their faults when they are only a trifle acquainted with manners. A little knowledge of the world is a very dangerous thing, especially in literature. But it is clever, and the man writes a capital style; and style is everything, ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... motion given to the auger, together with a still slower progressive motion at the same time. By this means the auger gradually enters the hollow of the barrel, and enlarges the cavity as it advances. After it has passed through, another auger, a trifle larger, is substituted in its place, and thus the calibre of the barrel is gradually enlarged to nearly the required size. Formerly, six borings were given to each barrel, but at the present time only four are permitted, aside from the rifling, which is a distinct operation, performed at the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... said Frau Kummerfelden. "The raven-mother is perhaps a trifle massively built. To be sure, last winter, when I was full of all kinds of pains, she picked me up out of bed and put me in again like a child. It's true she puffed and snorted over it as if she'd been Saint Christopher, ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... time, however, I imagine that we must have maintained a more nearly perpendicular course, for we accomplished the journey in a few minutes' less time than upon the occasion of my first journey through the five-hundred-mile crust. Just a trifle less than seventy-two hours after our departure into the sands of the Sahara, we broke through ...
— Pellucidar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... it lay before him, began in desolation and ended in desolation. Except that it was a trifle larger it differed in no important particular from many others that littered the face of the world through which he had passed during the last twenty-four hours. It was a mere dot in the center of ...
— The Coming of the Law • Charles Alden Seltzer
... put Hanny and Daisy in the buggy, as they were both so slim. Hanny hugged his arm, and said in a voice still a trifle shaky,— ...
— A Little Girl of Long Ago • Amanda Millie Douglas
... true I've managed to draw the line At going to tango teas, For, after all, I am fifty-nine And a trifle stiff in the knees; But I've had to give up billiards for "slosh," And pay laborious homage ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 146., January 21, 1914 • Various
... stating that he was opposed to four companies of the 49th, only doubled the number of companies; but this exaggeration is a trifle compared with the following gross and hudibrastic mis-statements, relative to the battle of Queenstown in "Ramsay's History of the United States," viz: "The 49th British regiment, signalized in Egypt under Colonel, ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper
... prostitutes of the streets are about on the same level. They are not dependent on proxenetism, but only on their protector and proprietor, which is a trifle less degrading. What degrades them most of all is police inscription, obligatory medical inspection, and the miserable system of solicitation on the pavement. It is necessary to have lost all feeling of modesty, and to possess a cynical audacity to ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... acquiring polish and fluency, contributes two brief but able essays: "History Repeats" and "How Great Britain Keeps Her Empire". In "History Repeats", certain parts of the second sentence might well be amended a trifle in structure, to read thus: "it must be remembered that the first half was a series of victories for the South, and that only after the Battle of Gettysburg did the strength of the North begin to assert itself". This number of The Coyote ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... is, that Victor stood against his paper at the table of the Bank. Blathenoy vowed blow for blow. But I think the little woman holds him in. She says she does.' 'Victor prompted you?' 'It occurred as it occurred.' 'She does it for love of us?—Oh! I can't trifle. Dartrey!' 'Tell me.' 'First, you haven't let me know what you think of my Nesta.' 'She's a dear good girl.' 'Not so interesting to you as a flighty little woman!' 'She has a speck of some sort on her mind.' Nataly spied at Dudley's behaviour, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... on the position of women, they might have been led to modify their exaggerated antithesis between society and government. Government, indeed, imposed a barbarous code of laws upon women. It was a trifle that they were excluded from political power. The law treated a wife as the chattel of her husband, denied her the disposal of her own property, even when it was the produce of her own labour, sanctioned his use of violence to her person, and refused (as indeed ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... George now thought impatiently that a great fuss was being made about a trifle, and that a matter much more important deserved attention. His ear caught a violent movement. The old man came out of the parlour, and, instead of taking his hat and rushing off to find the enchantress, he walked slowly and heavily upstairs, preceded by his ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... of all the books lent. In another great town prose fiction is 82 per cent; in a third 84 per cent; and in a fourth 67 per cent. I had the curiosity to see what happens in the libraries of the United States; and there—supposing the system of cataloguing and enumeration to be the same—they are a trifle more serious in their taste than we are; where our average is about 70 per cent, at a place like Chicago it is only about 60 per cent. In Scotland, too, it ought to be said that they have a better average in respect to prose fiction. There is a larger demand for books called serious than in ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... amused, and a trifle irritated. How could there be such a curious growth in the mountains? he questioned, as he rose and continued the descent. There was an unusual grace about her, in spite of her masculine air. Her features were regular, the ...
— A Mountain Europa • John Fox Jr.
... laid up a cripple in Edinburgh, she was turned, literally turned out of doors, and I wrote to a friend to shelter her till my return, when our marriage was declared. Her happiness or misery were in my hands, and who could trifle with ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... by the present volume is not entirely unoccupied. One of the earliest publications in this line is an anonymous English work, very dignified and conservative. The speeches it furnishes are painstaking, but a trifle heavy, and savor so much of English modes of expression, as well as thought and customs, as to be poorly adapted to this country. Two works have appeared in this country, also, one being intended apparently for wine parties only; the other, while containing ...
— Toasts - and Forms of Public Address for Those Who Wish to Say - the Right Thing in the Right Way • William Pittenger
... and the man came like a half-tamed dog, eyeing his lord warily. "You have given me more than mine own life this day, Tammuz of the Ford," he said a trifle unsteadily. "Kneel." And then and there Tammuz received his freedom and a hide of land for his own and ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... forward, and had pulled his hat a trifle over his eyes. There was a moment's lull in the storm, and it was so quiet that each could hear the ticking of ...
— The Courage of Marge O'Doone • James Oliver Curwood
... abroad, breaking cruelly and indifferently all ties with her (they had been engaged), Margaret still clung to him, and ever since has refused all comers for his sake. Her face is long and utterly devoid of colour; her nose is too large; her mouth a trifle too firm for beauty; her eyes, dark and earnest, have, however, a singular fascination of their own, and when she smiles one feels that one must love her. She is a very tall woman, and slight, and gracious in her ways. She is, ...
— The Hoyden • Mrs. Hungerford
... crowed offensively, boldly looking up into the other's face. "It seems you are yourself reluctant." And he laughed a trifle stridently, and looked about him for applause, ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini
... the same patch for long together. Though Europeans had been freely buying the land, they bought largely to hold for a rise and sell again, and comparatively few of the farms bought had been actually stocked with cattle, while, of course, the parts under tillage were a mere trifle. Hence there did not seem to have been as yet any pressure upon the natives, who, though they vastly outnumber the Europeans, are very few in proportion to the size of the country. I doubt if in the whole territory of the Company south of the Zambesi River there are 1,000,000. To ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... came to him and told him all. She saw that he was incredulous—could not realize such indelicacies in the woman he loved; and to make her humiliation complete, she proved to him, by producing a trifle he had given her, ...
— The Youth of Jefferson - A Chronicle of College Scrapes at Williamsburg, in Virginia, A.D. 1764 • Anonymous
... his head a trifle doubtfully. If Sandy Bourke and his chums had been tipped off, this trail was a little too plain to be true. Presently, as the machine plowed on south, they struck a patch of desert where the rock surfaced out and showed no trace of hoof or tire. Jordan stopped the car and the four ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... not an easy or safe one. Others were to go by water, and the water-party was sub-divided into two bands. One band, which included Susannah and the amazing baby, was to go in canoes; the other was to swim. The distance by water might be about eight miles, but that was a mere trifle to the Pitcairners, some of whom could swim right ...
— The Lonely Island - The Refuge of the Mutineers • R.M. Ballantyne
... Eustace Dolph at twenty-two was no more like his father than his patrician name was like simple and scriptural Jacob. The elder Dolph was a personable man, certainly; a handsome man, even, who looked to be nearer forty than fifty-two; and he was well dressed—perhaps a trifle out of the mode—and carried himself with a certain genial dignity, and with the lightness of a man who has not forgotten that he has been a buck in his time. But Eustace was distinctly and unmistakably a dandy. There are ...
— The Story of a New York House • Henry Cuyler Bunner
... service toward them on the part of the Church, but mere toleration of them as individuals who had lost the promise that the blessed seed was to spring from their flesh and blood. To forfeit the promise was no trifle; still, even that curse was so mitigated as to secure for them the privilege of beggars, so that heaven was not absolutely denied them, provided they allied themselves ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... are equal to their sires, most of them are less worthy, only a few are superior to their fathers"; or, "Though thou lovest thy wife, tell not everything which thou knowest to her, but unfold some trifle while thou concealest the rest." From the "Iliad" we may quote: "Thou knowest the over-eager vehemence of youth, quick in temper, but weak in judgment"; or, "Noblest minds are easiest bent"; or, "With everything man is satiated—sleep, sweet singing, and the ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... "It was something I must have dropped before. Only a trifle, but I would not like to lose it, and—I had one eye on the fuses—there seemed a second or two to spare. However, for some reason my throat feels all stuck together. Have you any cider in ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... eighteen, and as fair as could be, With her tempting smiles And maidenly wiles, And he was a trifle past seventy-three: Now what she could see Is a puzzle to me, In a prophet ...
— The Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert
... these spirits be. Hark! with shrewd intelligence, How they recommend to thee Action, and the joys of sense! In the busy world to dwell, Fain they would allure thee hence For within this lonely cell, Stagnate sap of life and sense. Forbear to trifle longer with thy grief, Which, vulture-like, consumes thee in this den. The worst society is some relief, Making thee feel thyself a man with men. Nathless, it is not meant, I trow, To thrust thee 'mid the vulgar throng. I to the upper ranks do not belong; Yet if, by ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... curds and cream you shall eat with us here! O the turtle soup and lobster sallads we shall devour with you there! O the old books we shall peruse here! O the new nonsense we shall trifle with over there! O Sir T. Browne!—here. O Mr. Hood and Mr. Jerdan there! ...
— Charles Lamb • Walter Jerrold
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