"Trap" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... many times and the people in the town noticed that Sayen could be a chicken or a fish. When he came with Kaboniyan to the town to fight the people, he went under the house to the chickens' place. The people said to themselves, "We will put a fish trap there, because Sayen after fighting goes in the chicken coop." They put a trap under the house by the coop. Sayen came in the town again to fight. After fighting he went under the house and he went into the trap, and the people ...
— Traditions of the Tinguian: A Study in Philippine Folk-Lore • Fay-Cooper Cole
... multitude of noble and illustrious personages have entered the Tower, and found it a brief resting-place on their way to heaven. Passing it many times, I never observed that anybody glanced at this shadowy and ominous trap-door, save myself. It is well that America exists, if it were only that her vagrant children may be impressed and affected by the historical monuments of England in a degree of which the native inhabitants are evidently incapable. These ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... bill introduced by Lord Suffield, which abolished the practice of setting spring-guns and other engines of destruction for the preservation of game. This bill, which passed into a law, declared it to be a misdemeanour in any person to set a spring-gun, man-trap, or other engine calculated to kill, or inflict grievous injury, with the intent that it should destroy life, or occasion bodily harm to any trespasser or other person who might come into contact with it. An exception was made in favour of gins and traps for ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... it was he who devised the plan of the mine. He must have been some renegade British soldier. The scoundrel! Would that I had him in my power for just five minutes! He must have met his just deserts, though, and fallen a victim to his own diabolical trap, thanks to you, for, besides ourselves, there is certainly no white ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... pleasantly. Yes, it was Mr. Hendricks. "Well, I am your friend, but I don't dare to let you know my name now; it would be all my life is worth." And Robert Hendricks grinned pleasantly into the rubber transmitter as he realized that his trap would work. "Yes, Mr. Hendricks, I am your friend, and you have a powerful enemy." What with the insinuations in the Index and the venom that Lige Bemis had been putting into anonymous circulars during the preliminary waterworks campaign, this was no news to Mr. Hendricks; so he let the voice ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... hasten, ere the household was astir, to examine some spot which had occurred to her as perhaps containing the secret she sought. One time it was a chimney that might have door and stair concealed within it; another, the stables, where she examined every stall in the hope of finding a trap to an underground way. Had any one else been in question but Richard, the traitor, the roundhead, she might have imagined an associate within the walls, in which case farther solution would not have been ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... the last straw; Ephie dropped on a chair, and hiding her face in her hands, burst into the tears she had hitherto restrained. Her previous trouble was increased a hundredfold. For she had recognised Louise at once; she felt that she was in a trap; and the person who had entrapped her was Maurice. Holding a tiny lace handkerchief to her eyes, she sobbed as though her heart ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... but in the foamy stretch below the falls he lost all track of the fugitive. Angry and disappointed he scrambled ashore, and, finding a dead sucker beside his runway, seized it savagely. As he did so, there was a smart click, and the jaws of a steel trap, snapping upon his throat, rid the wilderness of one of its most bloodthirsty and implacable marauders. A half-hour later the master of the pool was back in his lair, waving his delicate, gay-coloured fins over the yellow ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... hours the mind of Alixe revolved about a phrase she had picked up from Elvard Rentgen: "Music is a trap for weak souls; for the strong as the ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... eight native women, Fans clearly, by their bright brown faces, and their loads of brass bracelets and armlets; likely enough they had anklets too, but we could not see them, as the good ladies were pottering about waist-deep in the foam-flecked water, intent on breaking up a stockaded fish-trap. We pause and chat, and watch them collecting the fish in baskets, and I acquire some specimens; and then, shouting farewells when we are well away, in the proper civil way, resume ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... This humane person had himself tasted the tender mercies of 'paternal' government; he knew the nature of a dungeon better even than his prisoner. 'For four years,' we are told, 'he had seen no human face; his scanty food had been lowered to him through a trap-door; neither chair nor table were allowed him, his cell was never swept, his beard and nails were left to grow, the humblest conveniences of civilised humanity were denied him!'[67] On this man affliction had produced its softening, not its hardening ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... was neither hotel trap nor vehicle of any description at the station. True it was that our train was nearly two hours late! The idea of walking some four miles in the broiling sun was anything but amusing, but there seemed to be nothing else to do. So after a quarter of an hour uselessly spent in trying to get a carriage ...
— My Home In The Field of Honor • Frances Wilson Huard
... certainly not enough generosity to trust anybody, or conceive of a disinterested desire to do him a good turn. His whole concern now is how to be rid of this large tactless personage. "I must question him in such a manner as to trap him," he says to himself. It is agreed that he shall have three questions. He sits brooding a moment, trying to find something very difficult indeed. The motif of Mime's cogitations, which has already been frequently heard ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... seeing that it is so easily and almost universally obtained by extrusion of roots and leaves? Here are plants which lose their roots and leaves to acquire the same results by infinitely complex modes! What a wonderful and long-continued series of variations must have led up to the perfect "trap" in Utricularia, while at any stage of the process the same end might have been gained by a little more development of roots and leaves, as in 9,999 ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... later, the two set out behind the fat pony on a round of parochial visits. Underneath the seat of the trap reposed the numerous little packages of tea and tobacco with which the Rector, whose hand was always in his pocket, rarely omitted to season his visits to the sick among ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler
... manner the priests at Delphi, when they were prudent, made of the Pythia's ravings oracles not without elevation of tone and with an obvious political tendency. Occasions for superstition which baser minds would have turned to sheer lunacy or silly fears or necromantic clap-trap were seized by these nobler natures for a good purpose. A benevolent man, not inclined to scepticism, can always argue that the gods must have commanded what he himself knows to be right; and he thinks it religion on his part to interpret the oracle accordingly, or even to prompt it. ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... uneasily. "We should only be led into a trap in the forest, and we are too weak for that. I'm afraid, Harry, that this affair is going to assume dimensions greater than we think for. It is evident that the Indians suspected you of having been at their sacred treasure, and despatched a spy to watch if their suspicions ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn
... rats in a trap," he muttered. "She'll strike in four hours, and Gawd help us all if we can't git ...
— The Grain Ship • Morgan Robertson
... it didn't come off. British law is a fearsome and wonderful thing. You might both have got ten years for fixing a man-trap, to wit, a lethal engine. However, during the next few days you're going to change your abode. Tell Bates and his wife that they need a holiday, and ought to visit relatives in Yorkshire or North Wales. Pack what you need for a week, at least, ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... have done a trick with the cards,—not if my life had depended upon it. But I rather neatly extricated myself from the trap. ...
— Hearts and Masks • Harold MacGrath
... journey's end, he paused once and again to lend a helping hand. Now it was to a peddler who was vainly trying to piece together the broken strap that had held his pack, again to restore a young bird to its nest, and then to release a white rabbit which had caught its foot in a trap and was moaning piteously. ...
— The Spectacle Man - A Story of the Missing Bridge • Mary F. Leonard
... Remember that the Germans must have been daily, almost hourly, expecting the Allies to make a determined attempt to check their continued advance, and must have been very nervous of walking into some trap. Therefore the Commander of the German Advanced Guard would have to discover very exactly the nature of the resistance in front of him before the Officer commanding the main body—some miles behind, of course—could decide what force it would be necessary to deploy in order to dislodge ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... Rooke's poore Pawnes, are sillie swaines, Which seeldome serue, except by hap, And yet those Pawnes, can lay their traines, To catch a great man, in a trap: So that I see, sometime a groome May not ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... midst of the seven inert bodies; how they ransacked the place for the priceless furs; how they failed to locate them; how the conviction grew that this was the wrong place after all, and how at length Hardenberg discovered the trap-door that admitted to the cellar, where in the dim light of the uplifted lanterns they saw, corded in tiny bales and packages, the costliest ...
— A Deal in Wheat - And Other Stories of the New and Old West • Frank Norris
... perfect vegetables. To do this, he must add to good tillage a knowledge of the common plant diseases and of the ways of insects and bacterial pests; he must know how and when to spray, how and when to treat his seed, how and when to poison, how and when to trap his insect foes and to ...
— Agriculture for Beginners - Revised Edition • Charles William Burkett
... began Teddy, clearing his throat and looking down at her sideways—for all the world, as Billie thought, as if she were a mouse trap and might go off any minute—"is it really settled that you are going to ...
— Billie Bradley on Lighthouse Island - The Mystery of the Wreck • Janet D. Wheeler
... answered Paul. "I admit that the peasants have themselves to blame—just as a dog has himself to blame when he is caught in a trap." ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... and, floatin' up to the roof, walk down what would have been a fire trap on the East Side, and here we are at Professor Parducci's Temple of the Inner Star. A couple of West Indian hall boys, who's gag line was "Say-hib," lets us in. They was dressed in sheets and had towels twisted around their heads and smelled strongly of gin. Pretty soon Honest Dan comes out ...
— Kid Scanlan • H. C. Witwer
... masts were housed, the ports of the gun-deck closed in, and her usually trim cordage and nicely squared yards were now set in a way that only the most shiftless of merchant skippers would tolerate. Not many days passed before the enemy fell into the trap thus ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... a very stupid chap, and it takes me a little while to see what a woman is driving at. But though you are too clever for me, Ellenor, and caught me in a fine trap, I can make out the reason, the only reason, why you will be my wife. It is to save Le Mierre ...
— Where Deep Seas Moan • E. Gallienne-Robin
... madness, dear," she said, but her eyes were sparkling with the joy of recklessness. Away went the trap and the two light hearts. Mrs. Gray turned from a window in the house with tears in her eyes. To her troubled mind they were ...
— Brewster's Millions • George Barr McCutcheon
... rather short for his height. He was clean-shaven, his hair was a sandy grey, his complexion florid, his eyes blue and piercing. His upper lip was long, and his mouth, when closed, rather resembled some sort of a trap. He was dressed with care, almost with distinction. But for his pronounced American accent, he would probably have been taken for ...
— The Profiteers • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the long low clear room so cleverly prepared for life, with its white wall, its Dutch clock, its Dutch dresser, its pretty seats about the open fireplace, its cleverly placed bureau, its sun-trap at the garden end; she could feel the rich intention of living in its every arrangement and a sense of uncertainty in things struck home to her. She seemed to see a woman, a woman like herself—only very, very much cleverer—flitting about the room and making it. And then this woman had ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... with men, who, though dirty and mean, were so civil and gentle, that they could not displease, and who entered it so softly and quietly, that, neither hearing nor seeing their approach, it seemed as if they had availed themselves of some secret trap-doors through which they had mounted to fill the ship, without sound or bustle, in a single moment. When we were quitting it, however, this tranquillity as abruptly finished, for in an instant a part of them rushed round me, one demanding to carry Alex, another Adrienne, another seizing ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... change came over Jonson's countenance: he hesitated. "Excuse me, Sir," said he; "but I am, really, perfectly unacquainted with you, and I may be falling into some trap of the law, of which, Heaven knows, I am as ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... a trap were laid, if a net were spread, if a ruthless hawk pursues a defenceless bird, the end is ...
— Penshurst Castle - In the Days of Sir Philip Sidney • Emma Marshall
... into Heaven The Drunkards in the Street The City That Will Not Repent The Trap Where is David, the Next King of Israel? On Reading Omar Khayyam The Beggar's Valentine Honor Among Scamps The Gamblers On the Road to Nowhere Upon Returning to the Country Road The Angel and the Clown ...
— General William Booth enters into Heaven and other Poems • Vachel Lindsay
... stands; not brave, but with an air Of sullen stupor. Mark him well! Is he Not more like brute than man? Look in his eye! No light is there; none, save the glint that shines In the now glaring, and now shifting orbs Of some wild animal caught in the hunter's trap. ...
— Fifty years & Other Poems • James Weldon Johnson
... telling him some, but I'm hanged if I'm going to tell him all. There are too many in the secret already, what with you and the two in London; and as I keep on telling you, if one whiff of a suspicion gets abroad, the whole thing's busted, and a trap will be set that you and I will be caught ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... such a note as this, that I cannot be thankful enough for having finished "Atherton," for I am sure I could not write it now. There is some chance of my getting better in the summer, if I can be got into the air, and that must be by being let down in a chair through a trap-door, like so much railway luggage, for there is not the slightest power of helping myself left in me,—nothing, indeed, but the good spirits which Shakespeare gave to Horatio, and Hamlet envied him. Dearest Mr. Bennoch has made ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... ecstacies. Whenever our pace quickened to a trot or gallop, the larboard horse threw a great many snowballs with his feet. He seemed to aim at my face, and every few minutes I received what the prize ring would call 'plumpers in the peeper, and sockdolagers on the potato-trap.' ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... and the mouth gets bigger and bigger, more and more elasticity by expansion; finally the alligator, like the banker, happens to think that there is another kind of elasticity, when down comes the upper jaw on the lower jaw and the flies are caught in the trap, and the Government shall go out of the banking business to furnish no relief or escape (cries of good, and cheers). My friends, if I mistake not, every cry of the Republican party from the time of John C. Fremont until the campaign of 1896 has been against banks issuing paper money except ...
— One Thousand Secrets of Wise and Rich Men Revealed • C. A. Bogardus
... prefect of police, the reproduction, or rather the invention, of new tortures and improved racks; the oubliettes, which are wells or pits dug under the Temple and most other prisons, are the works of his own infernal genius. They are covered with trap-doors, and any person whom the rack has mutilated, or not obliged to speak out; whose return to society is thought dangerous, or whose discretion is suspected; who has been imprisoned by mistake, or discovered to be innocent; who is disagreeable to the Bonapartes, ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... like a trap with us inside of it," said the hunter. "That shout meant that they've seen our canoe, as you lads know. Warriors have already gone below to head us off, and maybe they've got another fleet, which, answering their signals, will come up from the ...
— The Lords of the Wild - A Story of the Old New York Border • Joseph A. Altsheler
... scenes pervaded by the female leg to an extent that easily reconciles him to the successive loss of five years of his life. He finally becomes King of Egypt, and, after having fought against the Crusaders in defence of those well-known Mohammedan gods, ISIS and OSIRIS, is carried down a trap by exulting demons. An Intolerable Comic Man opens up hitherto unknown wastes of dreariness, and sings a comic song that is positively more tedious than an article from the Nation. The Demoniac Servant is continually shot up through spring traps, in order to remark, "Ha! ha!" and to ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 6, May 7, 1870 • Various
... the matter in my mind," said Mr. Blowitt. "They are trying to play what they call a Yankee trick upon us. When we send our boats to the eastward, we shall send them into a trap. If the boats are to bring off forty men, they will expect them to go with only men enough to pull the oars; and when they get possession of them, they expect to retake ...
— Within The Enemy's Lines - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic
... an easy chair, thoroughly angry with Ray Rose, and chagrined at herself for being led into such a trap. ...
— Patty Blossom • Carolyn Wells
... was to inspect the apartment; but it afforded few hopes either of escape or protection. It contained neither secret passage nor trap-door, and unless where the door by which she had entered joined the main building, seemed to be circumscribed by the round exterior wall of the turret. The door had no inside bolt or bar. The single window opened upon an embattled space surmounting the ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... tell me; I don't want to know. Explanations diminish interest. I prefer the marvellous, and you are hideous enough to be wonderful. You have fallen from the highest heavens, or you have risen from the depths of hell through the devil's trap-door. Nothing can be more natural. The ceiling opened or the floor yawned. A descent in a cloud, or an ascent in a mass of fire and brimstone, that is how you have travelled. You have a right to enter like the gods. ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... This trap was constructed on a completely new principle. It consisted of a cleaver hung in a frame like a window; when any poor wretch got in, down it came with a tremendous din, and took off his head in a twinkling. They got the squire into one of these machines. In order to prevent ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the plumes won't kill 'em, an' I don't think it hurts 'em much," said the captain, thoughtfully. "Maybe we can rig up some sort of trap that will do the work without killin' 'em. It's time for bed, now, lads, but think it over and, perhaps, we can hit on some scheme. Had we better take turns at ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... up the bluff, I saw a tall powerful lad who had just straightened himself up. He had two rabbits slung over his shoulder, and his big bag seemed to contain many more. I walked towards him to have a look at what he was doing, and I found him manoeuvring with a great steel trap. When he had finished, we dropped into conversation in that easy way proper to wild places where few men ever come. I noticed his build and his face. His rough bonnet covered his forehead, but I could see he had plenty of thick brown hair. His eye was blue like tempered ...
— The Romance of the Coast • James Runciman
... structure of perforated cardboard and gilt paper, intended to catch flies. Its fragility may be imagined from the fact that it broke twice before I got it back into its box; still there was, I am sure, not another girl in Cleveland who could have found for sale a fly-trap at ...
— Stage Confidences • Clara Morris
... carry him down below and drop him through the trap door into the vaults," he cried. "You will have plenty of time to do it if you are quick. ...
— A Queen's Error • Henry Curties
... the oak or apple which forms its host, and thus illustrates the spectacle of a green plant feeding like an animal, on living matter? Or, what may we think of such plants as the sundew, the Venus' fly trap, the pitcher plants, the side saddle plants, the butterworts and bladderworts, and others of their kind, which not only capture insects, often by ingenious and complex lures, but also digest the animal food thus captured? A sundew thus spreads out its lure in the shape of its ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 787, January 31, 1891 • Various
... constituents went wild over the clever way in which Douglas had escaped Lincoln's trap. He now practically had his election. The Republicans shook their heads. Lincoln only was serene. He alone knew what he had done. The Freeport debate had no sooner reached the pro-slavery press ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... incident that made me feel quite sure Nourreddin Ali was in fear of the police. All the time the thundering was going on he glanced furtively about him like a rat in a trap. I saw him feel for a weapon under his arm-pit. When the noise ceased and the impatient visitor went away he sighed with relief. The place was certainly a trap; there was no ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy
... many Indian forays on the line we were to travel over and there was some danger, but it was the only way to get home. Each of the passengers, I among the number, had a good Winchester rifle, with plenty of ammunition. The coach was a crude rattle-trap, noisy and rough, but strong and well adapted to the journey. It was drawn by four horses of the country, small but wiry. We had long reaches between changes. The stations for meals had means of defense, and the food set before us was substantial, mainly buffalo beef, chickens and bread. ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... the black dator was saying, "that I wish only vengeance upon John Carter, Prince of Helium. I am leading you into no trap. What could I gain by betraying you to those who have ruined my nation ...
— Warlord of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... ordinarily laid unto the charge of the parties so accused, then the said ordinaries or their ministers use to put to them such subtle interrogatories concerning the high mysteries of our faith, as are able quickly to trap a simple unlearned, or yet a well-witted layman without learning, and bring them by such sinister introductions soon to their own confusion. And further, if there chance any heresy to be by such subtle policy, by any person confessed in words, and yet never ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... some thrust forward of the head, some nervous, rapid shifting of the hands or feet, some unconscious poise of the shoulders, brought the scene flashing before her—the white snow, the still forest, the little square pen-trap, the wolverine, desperate but cool, thrusting its blunt nose quickly here and there in baffled hope of an orifice of escape. Somehow the man reminded her of the animal, the fierce little woods marauder, trapped and hopeless, but scorning to cower as would ...
— Conjuror's House - A Romance of the Free Forest • Stewart Edward White
... fish, however," he said to himself, as he finished the last clam; "this food will not do to live on always. I may find some roots and berries, and perhaps turtles' eggs. I heard some wild-fowl cry last evening; I may find their eggs too, and trap them or some other birds, or get a turtle itself. The first thing I'll now do is to carry my hut nearer to the water, instead of having to bring the water all this way to the hut. That won't take long. I can carry the whole of it in two journeys, and quickly put it up. I must take the fire ...
— Ben Hadden - or, Do Right Whatever Comes Of It • W.H.G. Kingston
... parcelled up the company according to their duties, for while Ringan was captain of the stockade, I was the leader of the venture. I sent out Bertrand and Donaldson to trap in the woods; Ringan, with Grey and Shalah, stayed at home to strengthen still further the stockade and protect Elspeth; while I took my musket and some pack-thongs and went up the hill-side to look for game. We were ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... inwardly; but he soon had something else to think of, for a hurricane came down on them as they lay in a trap of coral with only one outlet, which the Ruby had surveyed that day. He took his ship out gallantly, but the flag-ship dare not attempt it—Dibbs was the only man who knew the passage thoroughly. He managed to land on the shore below the harbour, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Pendulum that swung in the Pit. Back and forth, back and forth, bringing nearer and nearer the knife-edge of its dire threat that nine o'clock would come and the children not be in school. Somehow they must all manage to break the bonds that held them there and escape from the death-trap before the fatal swinging menace reached them. The stroke of nine, booming out in that house, would be like the Crack o' Doom to ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... came on him once more. Dared he reject the gift if true? No spark of gratitude could he feel, but chained, dragged at the heels of his fate, he submitted to think it true; resolving the next moment that it was a fabrication and a trap: but he flung ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... while shells go whirling over one's head at the rate of sixty a minute, while houses are burning on either side of one, is a horrible experience. To have to bear all these horrors without being able to put a stop to them, is maddening. At such moments one feels like a mouse caught in a trap. One would have to be more than human not ...
— The Better Germany in War Time - Being some Facts towards Fellowship • Harold Picton
... a clean plate and began to eat. He took great mouthfuls, as if he feared he might be interrupted before he had swallowed enough. He shovelled the food into his mouth, open like a trap, with both hands, and chunks of food went into his stomach, swelling out his throat as it passed down. Now and then he stopped, almost ready to burst like a stopped-up pipe. Then he would take the cider ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... are worth each a month's wages to the fishermen, still hold their own and even increase on the great island; while the wolves, once more numerous, are slowly vanishing, though they are never hunted, and not even Old Tomah himself could set a trap cunningly enough to catch one. The old hunter told, while Mooka and Noel held their breaths and drew closer to the light, how once, when he made his camp alone under a cliff on the lake shore, seven huge wolves, white as the snow, came racing swift and silent over the ice straight ...
— Northern Trails, Book I. • William J. Long
... Why, that is as easy said As any three short words; takes no more breath To say, "I hate you." What, sir, have I lived Three times four weeks your wedded loyal wife, And do not know your follies? I will wager (If I could trap his countship into this!) The rarest kisses I know how to give Against the turquoise, that within a month You'll grow so jealous—and without a cause, Or with a reason thin as window glass— That you will ache to ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... he welcomed the sight of Nunsmere more than the next Saturday afternoon when the trap turned off the highroad and the common came into view. The pearls and faint blues of the sky, the tender mist softening the russet of the autumn trees, the gray tower of the little church, the red roofs of the ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... place much; but somehow I feel glad when I get among the quiet eighteenth century buildings, in cosy places with some elbow room about them, after the older architecture. This other is bedevilled and furtive; it seems to stoop; I am afraid of trap-doors, and could not go pleasantly into such houses. I don't know how much of this is legitimately the effect of the architecture; little enough possibly; possibly far the most part of it comes from bad historical novels ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Lacy at last, when every eye was on him, holding up a small fragment of rock before us and the next moment grinding it under his heel in rage. "Look! To think that I've been fooled agin by this blanked fossiliferous trap—blank it! To think that after me and Professor Parker was once caught jist in this way up on the Stanislaus at the bottom of a hundred-foot shaft by this rotten trap—that ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... citizens, ipso facto their generals (amateur soldiers always cabbage-hoers at heart) afford him a good deal of amusement; as if you should send out the mayor of Jonesville, Arkansaw, against a Foch or a Hindenburg. One of them, a fool of a fellow, blunders into a booby-trap and loses the army which is almost the sole hope of Rome; and comes home, utterly defeated, —to be gravely thanked by the Senate for not committing suicide after his defeat: "for not despairing of the Republic." Ah, there is real Great Stuff in that; they are admirable ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... the side there, and plenty of room all round for those who defended the place to use spears and stones to beat down those who came against them. Just look, it wouldn't only be driving them back, but knocking them off into a hole or trap where they'd be quite ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... said Fandy; "he was mendin' a trap, over there,"—pointing to an enclosed corner close by the house, that had been roughly boarded over and fitted up with bench and table by Master Ben, so as to make a sort ...
— Donald and Dorothy • Mary Mapes Dodge
... was put on his guard, not against the banker, but against the unknown enemy who had drawn him into this trap. A second time, he looked in our direction, then walked toward the door. But Mon. Andermatt ...
— The Extraordinary Adventures of Arsene Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar • Maurice Leblanc
... like a bird—'bout the moon an' the stars an' the brooks an' the rivers an' the wrongs o' the red man, but it wouldn't be wuth the song o' a barn swaller less he can show ye that the wimmen are all right. If they've been treated proper, it's the same as proved. Ye let 'em out o' the bear trap which it has often happened. But you hear to me, when they go off this way it's to kill an' grab an' hustle back with the booty. They ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... said McGinty. "And we'll learn from Birdy Edwards himself where he got his news if we have to cut his heart out first. Did he seem to scent a trap?" ...
— The Valley of Fear • Arthur Conan Doyle
... anxiety. The cool night-air, whose effect was increased by the rapid motion, soon increased Leonard's somnolence and for a while he slept soundly, his companion watching carefully lest he should sway over and fall out of the trap. He even held him up as they ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker
... Joves great ordinance shall be here implide To strike him under th'AEtna of his pride. To which work lend your hands, and let us cast Where we may set snares for his ranging greatnes. I think it best, amongst our greatest women: 150 For there is no such trap to catch an upstart As a loose downfall; for, you know, their falls Are th'ends of all mens rising. If great men And wise make scapes to please advantage, Tis with a woman—women that woorst may 155 Still hold mens candels: ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman
... the other few who had seen the real state of things, and turn back all those whom they could, getting them out through the vestry. But the main body were quite out of their reach, and everybody tried to rush scrambling into the narrow centre aisle, choking up the door, which was a complicated trap meant to keep out draughts. We in the gallery tried vainly to assure them that the only danger was in the crowd, and the clergyman in his desk, sure that was the chief peril, at any rate, went on waving and calling to them to wait; but ...
— More Bywords • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Franklin and Sumner—for the latter also had come up from Washington—more than compensated for the casualties of the battle. But formidable earthworks, against generals who dare manoeuvre, are often a mere trap ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... came to a very lonely spot between two lofty black mountains. Here he lighted a fire, and threw into it some gum, all the time repeating many strange words. The ground then opened just before them, and a stone trap-door appeared. After lifting this up, the Magician told Aladdin to go below, down some broken steps, and at the foot of these he would find three halls, in the last of which was a door leading to a garden full of beautiful ...
— The Frog Prince and Other Stories - The Frog Prince, Princess Belle-Etoile, Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp • Anonymous
... lock ten millions of times, beyond the knowledge of the smith that made it, or of me who invented it. If a stranger open it, it setteth an alarm agoing, which the stranger cannot stop from running out; and besides, though none should .be within hearing, yet it catcheth his hand, as a trap doth a fox; and though far from maiming him, yet it leaveth such a mark behind it, as will discover him if suspected; the escutcheon or lock plainly showing what moneys he hath taken out of the box to a farthing, and how many ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... the Duke at Christchurch," said the parson. "He and I were of the same par. He was Lord Mistletoe then. Dear me, that was a long time ago. I wonder whether he remembers being upset out of a trap with me one day after dinner. I suppose we had dined in earnest. He has gone his way, and I have gone mine, and I've never seen him since. Pray remember me to him." Lady Augustus said she would, and did entertain some ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... of the South does not depend upon such miserable clap-trap as Kansas or the Fugitive Slave Law. It rests upon a full, open, and deliberate recognition of the rights of the Southern people; and the Senator from Illinois, by moving the abrogation of the so-called slave-trade treaty with England, allowing the South to supply herself with ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... the top of Kinnakulla, where a stone is raised as the goal of their wanderings. The traveller reads in his guide-book about the rocky strata of Kinnakulla: "At the bottom is found sandstone, then alum-stone, then limestone, and above this red-stone, higher still slate, and lastly, trap." And, now that he has seen this, he descends again, and goes on board. He has seen Kinnakulla:—yes, the stony rock here, amidst the swelling verdure, showed him one heavy, thick stone finger, and most of the travellers think that they are like the devil, if they lay hold upon one finger, they ...
— Pictures of Sweden • Hans Christian Andersen
... headstrong, stolid enough, to mark out a line for herself and fling him aside without waiting for judge or jury. Much as it might cost her, she would not hesitate to break all ties with him, and any that existed were very slight. He, himself, had kept them so. Perhaps, after all, he had better order the trap round, ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... playing had qualities which one cannot find in theirs. If he had not absolutely a genius for music, he certainly had a genius for attaining perfection in all he did, which was perhaps the next best thing. I imagine that he would have made a mouse-trap or built a cathedral exactly as he played a Beethoven symphony. The mouse would never escape from the trap; there would be nothing wanting, down to the most modern appliances and conveniences, in the cathedral. In the Fifth symphony he gave us every minute nuance in rigid obedience ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... actually imagine you are going to get off as easy as this?" he inquired, "Man Andrew, I haven't been senior partner in Walkingshaw & Gilliflower for nothing. You're just a rat in a trap. That's precisely your position at ...
— The Prodigal Father • J. Storer Clouston
... a sort of clap-trap laudatory couplet inserted for the quiet of the Committee [3], and I have added, towards the end, the couplet you were pleased to like. The whole Address is seventy-three lines, still perhaps too long; and, if ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... from Frith Street we worked our perilous way. From the top landing of a French restaurant we had gained access, by means of a trap, to the roof of the building. Now, the busy streets of Soho were below me, and I clung dizzily to telephone standards and smoke stacks, rarely venturing to glance downward upon the cosmopolitan throng, surging, dwarfish, ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... the hammer, mother said I may, so Helen lied; the maid said it was time to go to bed, but it is only five minutes to seven, so the maid lied. And he would delight especially in asking the baby brother leading questions, to trap him into saying lies. This experience did not result in making Herbert any more scrupulous in his own speech, for his imagination created interesting and dramatic situations, which he described with zeal and enthusiasm, for a long time after he ...
— Your Child: Today and Tomorrow • Sidonie Matzner Gruenberg
... shouts. But he shook his fist, and said something disrespectful about port wine; but I was that roused up with the humour o' the thing, I laffed so as I had to set down. A prisoner for full four weeks, or durin' the pleasure o' the Health Officer, that's Sartoris. Lord! what a trap to be caught in." ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... as they came up the roadway a trap was depositing a man whom Miss Milbrey greeted with evident surprise and some restraint. He was slight, dark, and quick of movement, with finely cut nostrils that expanded and quivered nervously like those of a ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... worth while!" exclaimed the other with glowing eyes. "Lead them into a trap, where they would be mowed down like ripe ...
— Air Service Boys Over The Enemy's Lines - The German Spy's Secret • Charles Amory Beach
... faces. Among them were old men crushed by sorrow, and old men ruined by vice; aged women with faces that seemed to plead for pity, women that made you shrink from their unwomanly gaze; lion-like young men, made for heroes but caught in the devil's trap and changed into beasts; and boys whose looks showed that sin had already stamped them with its foul insignia, and burned into their souls the shame which is to be one of the elements of its eternal punishment. A less impressible man than I would have felt moved at the sight of that ...
— California Sketches, Second Series • O. P. Fitzgerald
... lantern, followed her, and mounted, lighting the way for her along low-hanging eaves among the rustling husks. She dropped the trap-door silently, above the ladder, took the lantern from my hand, set it on the floor, and seated herself beside it on the husks, her cheeks ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... the army, prepared no doubt for the occasion, shouted with all their might, saluting him anew as Imperator, and congratulating him on his "bloodless victory." Parthamasiris felt that he had fallen into a trap, and would gladly have turned and fled; but he found himself surrounded by the Roman troops and virtually a prisoner. Upon this he demanded a private audience, and was conducted to the Emperor's tent, where he made proposals which were coldly rejected, and he was given to understand that ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 6. (of 7): Parthia • George Rawlinson
... attention is a trap Set for the catching of all compliments To Monticello, and all else abroad That has a ...
— The Three Taverns • Edwin Arlington Robinson
... dreadfully homesick, but couldn't figure on how he could leave the "critters," or how he could trust himself on a train. Mr. Stewart became interested, and he is a very resourceful man, so an old Frenchman was found who had no home and wanted a place to stay so he could trap. He was installed at Zebulon Pike's with full instructions as to each "critter's" peculiarities and needs. Then one of the boys, who was going home for Christmas to Memphis, was induced to wait for Mr. Parker and to see him safe to Little Rock. His money was banked for him, and Mr. Stewart saw ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... that shall make ye quick," says this fellow Penfeather, dangling a great key before my swimming eyes. "Here's freedom from your devil's trap and a plaguy time I've ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... peck away at the carcass of a beaver I had skinned. They often spoil deer saddles by pecking into them near the kidneys. They do great damage to the trappers by stealing the bait from traps set for martens and minks, and by eating trapped game. They will sit quietly and see you build a log trap and bait it, and then, almost before your back is turned, you hear their hateful "Ca-ca-ca," as they glide down and peer into it. They will work steadily, carrying off meat and hiding it. I have thrown out pieces, and watched one to see how much he would carry off. He flew across a wide ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photograph [April, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... left by our pioneer for the present. We found, however, upon examination, that the deer had walked up on the dam, probably to take a look at what was below, and on the other side, when his foot slipped down between the poles, and he was caught as in a trap. His leg was badly broken, and nearly severed by his efforts to get loose, and the bark of the poles was worn away within reach of his struggles. He had died where he thus got hung; and there he was, stone dead, but not yet cold, when we found him. He was a fine, fat, young deer, and died ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... friend D's devout but feeble mind, X follows up the assault, by asking him, as a deductio ad absurdum, whether he should like to see the Pope in sandals like St Peter. The catechumen falls into the trap at once; flares up at the idea of such degradation being inflicted on the "Master of kings and Father of the faithful;" and asks indignantly if, for a "touch of Italianita," he is to be suspected of having "washed away his ...
— Rome in 1860 • Edward Dicey
... queer kind of a trap," Harry said. "It's just like a cage. We can put them in this until we build a larger one. We can make one out of a box with ...
— The Bobbsey Twins in the Country • Laura Lee Hope
... at the station—a small place in Tipperary—the dusk of the early winter evening was closing in, and Harold recollected that his prompt departure from Dublin had prevented him from apprising Jack of his movements. Of course there would be no trap from Lisnahoe to meet this train, but that mattered little. Half a dozen hack-drivers were already extolling the merits of their various conveyances, ...
— Stories by English Authors: Ireland • Various
... had taught the Uitlanders to examine any proposals coming from the Government with the utmost care; and the representatives of the mining industry were soon of one mind in regarding these negotiations as nothing but a trap. ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... album. Her fingers ran over the keys with amazing rapidity as she beat out the melody with the left hand on the groaning bass, while with the right she executed a series of scales to the top of the keyboard and back. Jonah listened spellbound to the clap-trap arrangement. He had the native ear for music, and he recognized that he was in the presence of a born musician. Ray crept near, and listened with open mouth to this display of musical fireworks. When she had finished, Clara turned to Jonah with a languid ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... much as raised my hand," he went on, addressing the other lodgers, "those three sneaking wretches yonder would have drawn claret on Mamma Vauquer's domestic hearth. The rogues have laid their heads together to set a trap for me." ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... concerned with is to show, that if such a state of things is due to "omnipotent design," the omnipotent designer must be concluded, so far as reason can infer, to be non-beneficent. And this it is not difficult to show. When I see a rabbit panting in the iron jaws of a spring-trap, I abhor the devilish nature of the being who, with full powers of realising what pain means, can deliberately employ his noble faculties of invention in contriving a thing so hideously cruel. But if ...
— A Candid Examination of Theism • George John Romanes
... accordingly marching into a trap, and Schuyler was doing the best that could be done. But on the first of August the intrigue against him triumphed in Congress, and Gates was appointed to supersede him in the command of the northern army. Gates, however, did not arrive upon the scene until the 19th of August, and by ...
— The War of Independence • John Fiske
... "If the old trap did go up in smoke I guess nobody would care much," muttered Lil Artha, as he pressed his face still further into the opening, after Elmer released ...
— Pathfinder - or, The Missing Tenderfoot • Alan Douglas
... composed a poem in praise of his prison. With a piece of charcoal he made a great drawing of angels surrounding God the Father on the wall. Once only his courage gave way: he determined on suicide, and so placed a beam that it should fall on him like a trap. When all was ready, an unseen hand took violent hold of him, and dashed him on the ground at a considerable distance. From this moment his dungeon was visited by angels, who healed his broken leg, and reasoned ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... we can't stay here!" cried the now excited adventurer. "We'll be drowned like rats in a trap! Let me out! Isn't there some way? I'll be shot through a torpedo tube, if necessary! I must get out! I can't stay here to be drowned! I have too ...
— Tom Swift and his Undersea Search - or, The Treasure on the Floor of the Atlantic • Victor Appleton
... the point of exchanging blows, when the lady suddenly flung back her veil and revealed the face of—Themire! You may believe that I was dumfounded for an instant; then I began to believe that my faith in this woman had been misplaced. Could it be possible that she had been caught in her own trap—that she had found this Vavel's eyes more alluring than the fortune we promised her, and that instead of betraying him to us she would do the very opposite—betray us to him? It may be that she has woven a more delicate web than I can detect with which ...
— The Nameless Castle • Maurus Jokai
... a dozen strangers running from the open air-lock of the ship. In uniform, some of them—government officials of Earth and Mars. Damn them, it was a trap! ...
— Vulcan's Workshop • Harl Vincent
... things, Dan Poet, if you can, Eke out your acts, I pray, with mortal man, Nor call a ghost, unless some cursed scrape [xlv] Must open ten trap-doors for your escape. Of all the monstrous things I'd fain forbid, I loathe an Opera worse than Dennis did; [24] Where good and evil persons, right or wrong, Rage, love, and aught but moralise—in song. Hail, last memorial of our foreign friends, [xlvi] Which Gaul allows, and still ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... with the candid air of a kind and sensible sister—"except by marrying her, you mean? Yes, I see the situation. I appreciate your point of view. I should understand it if it were not that she unquestionably laid the trap for you deliberately—just as that spider laid his for moths and flies. And marriage by ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... to survey the scene of the conflict. He was gone but a moment, and when he came out of the bushes, he was dragging after him—not a grizzly bear, but a large gray wolf, which had been overpowered and killed by the dogs. One of the wolf's hind-legs was caught in a trap, to which was fastened a short piece of chain and a clog. The animal had doubtless been paying his respects to some sheep-fold during the night, and had put his foot into the trap while searching for his supper. He had retreated toward the mountains, and had dragged the trap ...
— Frank Among The Rancheros • Harry Castlemon
... called to him. Monsieur le Duc came up, and entered the room. Then, while one remark was leading to another, Monsieur slipped off his dressing-gown, and then his shirt. A valet de chambre standing by, at once slipped a clean shirt into the hands of M. le Duc, who, caught thus in a trap, was compelled to offer the garment to Monsieur, as it was his duty to do. As soon as Monsieur had received it, he burst out laughing, and said—"Good-bye, cousin, go away. I do not want to delay you longer." M. le Duc felt the ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... do it! You have fallen into no trap here, but upon the heart of a woman who adores you, and it is I who will be cast into ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... all the good men they kin git, and you'd be wuth a heap to 'em, for you know all about the Injins,—whar to find 'em, and how to trap 'em," added Ethan, with considerable warmth; and he was a little inclined to offer ...
— Hope and Have - or, Fanny Grant Among the Indians, A Story for Young People • Oliver Optic
... staged a lurid scene: that blazing trap-door in its midst; and each man there a naked demon madly working to save his roasting skin. Abaft the mainmast the deck-pump was being ceaselessly worked by relays of the passengers; dry blankets were passed forward, soaking blankets were passed aft, and flung ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... a thicket about a hundred feet away, and in that direction dashed the two unsuspecting youths, never dreaming of the plan laid to trap them. As they ran into the thicket four persons came behind them, and in a trice each was thrown violently forward on the ...
— The Rover Boys in Southern Waters - or The Deserted Steam Yacht • Arthur M. Winfield
... that spurred me to action. We must get out of this hole we were in; the lazaret was a trap. The die was cast; the mutiny was on—or would be in ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... opened public schools everywhere and compelled parents to send their boys for instruction. Perhaps he just wanted to be good, and really hoped to benefit the country. But to the Jews the public schools appeared as a trap door to the abyss of apostasy. The instructors were always Christians, the teaching was Christian, and the regulations of the schoolroom, as to hours, costume, and manners, were often in opposition to Jewish practices. The public school interrupted the boy's sacred studies ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... "Good day. I don't wish him any harm; but I feel pretty sure he'll run straight into some trap. That ...
— A Dash from Diamond City • George Manville Fenn
... concentration. Then he is instructed to pass it on to the sub-conscious mentality by an effort of the Will, which effort is aided by forming a mental picture of the subject as a material substance, or bundle of thought, which is being bodily lifted up and dropped down a mental hatch-way, or trap-door, in which it sinks from sight. The student is then instructed to say to the sub-conscious mentality: "I wish this subject thoroughly analyzed, arranged, classified (and whatever else is desired) and then the results handed back to ...
— A Series of Lessons in Raja Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... voyage through the North Sea we met a large sailboat, with the Swedish flag flying from the topmast. She lay completely becalmed, and signaled for us to draw near. We saw a large crowd gathered on her deck, and we approached cautiously, fearing some trap; when to our joyful surprise we found she had 150 German officers and sailors on board. They belonged to one of our auxiliary cruisers, the "Meteor." Her captain after many exploits had been pursued by several English cruisers, and to ...
— The Journal of Submarine Commander von Forstner • Georg-Guenther von Forstner
... a simplistic and inaccurate picture of religious teachings. Mr. Cranmer-Byng, like many cross-cultural scholars, seems to have fallen into the trap of seeing only noble things afar, and only ignoble things at hand. As counter-examples, there are numerous schools of Buddhism, some of which DO offer a type of heaven; and the Confucian ideal of reciprocity can easily be, and often has been, misinterpreted in the same way as Semitic religions. ...
— A Lute of Jade/Being Selections from the Classical Poets of China • L. Cranmer-Byng
... squat form, as the figure will reflect a greater length than it is drawn. When you have lighted the lamp in the lantern and placed the mirror in a proper direction, put the box on a table, and, setting the chafing-dish in it, throw some incense in powder on the coals. You then open the trap door and let down the glass in the groove slowly, and when you perceive the smoke diminish, draw up the glass, that the figure may disappear, and shut the trap-door. This exhibition will afford much wonder. The lights in the room must be extinguished, ...
— Entertainments for Home, Church and School • Frederica Seeger |
