"Trick" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... have a copy of the original French), Mary plunges into the affected and figured style already practised by Les Precieuses of her day; and expands into symbolisms in a fantastic jargon. If courtiers of both sexes conversed in the style of Euphues (which is improbable), they learned the trick of it from Euphues; not the author of Euphues from them. Lyly's most popular prose was accessible to Shakespeare. The whole convention as to how the great should speak and bear themselves was accessible in poetry and ...
— Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown • Andrew Lang
... at ease, now that this welcome friend had appeared opportunely. Another prolonged shout, almost a howl of derision, went up by the fence at some new trick played ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... knocked out my pipe before I answered. I had not made up my mind, and wanted an additional moment to decide. Before the burning tobacco had fallen into the sea I had decided; just that little extra second did the trick. It is often the way when you have been bothering a long time ...
— King Solomon's Mines • H. Rider Haggard
... Hubbard's dog advanced angrily, and taking the cat by the nape of the neck, threw her among the cat army, saying: "The trumpet hasn't sounded, and we haven't begun yet. That was a real sneaky trick, just like a cat." ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, October 1878, No. 12 • Various
... Mr. Ferret, who, having acted for the first Mrs. Harlowe, I naturally conjectured must know something of her history and connections—to take for the present no ostensible steps in the matter. Mr. Ferret, like myself, was persuaded that the sham resuscitation of his first wife was a mere trick, to enable Harlowe to rid himself of the presence of a woman he no longer cared for. "I will take an opportunity," said Mr. Ferret, "of quietly questioning Richards: he must have known the first wife; Eleanor Wickham, I remember, was her maiden name; and if not bought ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... standing alone in the dark, he cursed himself for a fool for letting her go—a boy's trick. But then the whole affair did not desperately engage him. He sat in the comfortable chair, and lit a cigarette, shielding it with his hand so that she would not see it, recognize in its triviality his detachment. A wave of weariness swept over him; the night was like a blanket ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... variety stage and the circus are always trying to find something new, for the same old trapeze performances, trials of strength, performances of rope dancers, etc., have been presented so many times that anyone who invents an entirely new trick is sure of making a large amount of money out of it; the more wild and dangerous it is, the better. Anything that naturally stands on its feet but can be made to stand on its head will be well received in the latter attitude by the public. Some ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1157, March 5, 1898 • Various
... Jack to himself, starting up at once, "So that is your Welsh trick, is it? But I will be even with you." Then, leaving his bed, he laid a big billet of wood among the blankets, and taking one of these to keep himself warm, made himself snug in a corner of the room, pretending to snore, so as ...
— English Fairy Tales • Flora Annie Steel
... approved of; and the general rumor from the castle was, that Dionysius would voluntarily resign his authority, and rather do it himself as his own good deed, than let it be the act of Dion. But this profession was a mere trick to amuse the Syracusans. For he put the deputies that were sent to him in custody, and by break of day, having first, to encourage his men, made them drink plentifully of raw wine, he sent the garrison of mercenaries ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... gave place to wonder. The "Hills" are not squeamish in any one particular; so that the fact that the cave became a shambles upset nobody. The surgeon's thrill that makes even half-amateurs oblivious of all but the work in hand, coupled with the desperate need of winning this first trick, made King horror-proof; and nobody waiting for the next turn was troubled because the man under the knife screamed a little ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... scornfully if he happened to be near the fence. The patient horses who pulled the road-roller or the noisy lawn-mower made his eyes redden savagely. And he hated with peculiar zest the roguish little trick elephant, Bong, who would sometimes, his inquisitive trunk swinging from side to side, go lurching lazily by with a load of squealing children ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
... the fad of a new trick puzzle—a few bits of twisted wire, or a stick and a string—will as effectually occupy the time of an entire community as a cowbell will take up the undivided attention of a cur, if the bell is ...
— When Egypt Went Broke • Holman Day
... "but of traditions of places, there are very many, and, as an example, there was in Randers province an island, and on the island a mansion; and when the family owning it were absent, three women-servants determined to play the priest a trick. They dressed up a sow like a sick person in bed, and sent for the priest to administer the sacrament to a dying person. The priest, however, saw the wicked deception, and at once left the island in his ...
— A Danish Parsonage • John Fulford Vicary
... would try a new trick. He would climb a leaning tree, and then jump to the ground. This trick would soon be found out. Then he'd try another. He would make a circle of a quarter of a mile in circumference. By making a loop in his ...
— Beautiful Joe - An Autobiography of a Dog • by Marshall Saunders
... shut that stream of water off, or turn it into some other channel, then we can cross, and keep on to the city of gold. And I think there must be some valve—some lever, or handle or something similar to the one that moved the altar-near here that does the trick. Let's all look ...
— Tom Swift in the City of Gold, or, Marvelous Adventures Underground • Victor Appleton
... much-honoured husband bore his wife with him to London, where for a time the modest comfort of a house in distant Bayswater satisfied them. Business prospered, and money came pouring in. The wife, who, it must be said, had undeniable beauty, excellent manners, and the trick of intuitively adapting herself to any society, was taken up by a great lady who happened to see her holding a stall at a large bazaar in which the fashionable world took some interest. Acting upon the great lady's suggestion, she was photographed ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, April 18, 1891 • Various
... out-trick them, isn't it? You make a will leaving your money to the Cause, and then ...
— A Man of Means • P. G. Wodehouse and C. H. Bovill
... history of his future fortunes on a leaf dipped in the Castalian stream; a trick which, according to the physician Vandale, (de Oraculis, p. 281, 282,) might be easily performed by chemical preparations. The emperor stopped the source of such dangerous knowledge; which was again opened by the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... the one condition that a physician has hypnotized the subject in the interests of his health and that the patient has agreed beforehand to allow in the presence of witnesses certain psychological studies. Needless to say that any hypnotization for mere amusement and as a parlor trick ought to ...
— Psychotherapy • Hugo Muensterberg
... had a coffee-house at the beginning of the last century. It was named Alice's, presumably after the proprietor, and was on one occasion the scene of a neat version of the confidence trick. The coffee-house was used almost entirely by barristers engaged in the different courts of law then held in Westminster Hall, and they availed themselves of the house for robing before going to the courts, and ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... protector to Christianity. The officials, getting word of Amphibalus' whereabouts, sent a guard to arrest him, whereupon Alban dismissed his guest secretly, and, wrapping himself in the priest's robe and hood, awaited the soldiers. They seized him, and took him before the magistrates, when the trick was discovered. He was given the alternative of dying or sacrificing to the gods of Rome, but, preferring the crown of martyrdom, after cruel torments he was led to his doom. He was to be taken across the Ver to be beheaded, but miracles appeared. The stream, which had been a-flood, ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... "I could sho' you forty, but I'll tell you what's crackin' good fun an' it'll test you mor'n knowin' the birds—that's easy. But the hard thing is to find their nests an' then to tell by the eggs what bird it is. That's the cracker-jack trick." ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... at once across the country, and before he could stop it, he found himself in the midst of the enemy's camp. The two Saracen princes were extremely shocked and distressed lest this should be supposed a trick, and instantly escorted Longsword back, with gifts of three chargers which proved to be ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... There was the trick mule, made up of two men under an ox-hide, the mule fell apart and precipitated Don Grahame in between its two halves ... each half then ran away ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... mischief for Peter Phipps. I'm your man, body and soul—you know that. But you've been a good friend to me—almost the only one I ever had—and I've got to put this up to you. Peter Phipps is as clever as the devil. He is up to every trick in this world, and a few that he probably borrowed from Satan himself. I'm not trying to put you off. I only want to say this. Go warily. Don't let him lure you on into risking too much on any one move. Always remember that he ...
— The Profiteers • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... and his officers were making merry in the great house, drinking the Schuyler wine, and on the following day the mansion was burned to the ground. But fate played the British leader a curious trick; for within a few days Burgoyne found himself defeated and a guest in the Schuyler home at Albany. "I expressed my regret," he has testified, "at the event which had happened and the reasons which had occasioned it. He [Schuyler] desired me to ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... familiar to every school-boy. Lavretsky felt that he was not at his ease among his fellow-men; he had a secret inkling that he was an exceptional character. The Anglomaniac had played his son a cruel trick; his capricious education had borne its fruit. For many years he had implicitly obeyed his father; and when at last he had learned to value him aright, the effects of his father's teaching were already produced. Certain habits had become rooted in him. He did not ...
— Liza - "A nest of nobles" • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... continue to have my studies broken in upon by these excitements. I really cannot. I thought I had made an arrangement with Madame Goldmarker to relieve me, but she has just served me a most unladylike and deceitful trick, and the outcome of it will be that I shall have to send Lisa to the asylum. I can get her examined by the commissioners some time before Christmas, and if they decide she's imbecile they'll take her off my hands. I didn't want to part with her till the twins got older, but I've ...
— Marm Lisa • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Danny a list of names and addresses and the road kid's trick, which his ugly jocker had most carefully rehearsed with him, was worked by calling at residences and by correctly quoting the names foil the servants and obtain an interview with the lady of the house to whom he would tell ...
— The Trail of the Tramp • A-No. 1 (AKA Leon Ray Livingston)
... and nobody else. I see it all clear as day. You robbed Tonet of his sweetheart. That boy and Dolores were lovers before you even thought of speaking to a girl of tio Paella's! Now that was a mean trick, come to think of it! Marry your brother's promised bride! As rotten a thing as ever I did! And so, what else could you expect? There they are together all the time—as had to be, brother-in-law, sister-in-law—and both in the family. Well, could you expect ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... made," he said easily. "I don't guess you'll find it ther'—'less you use trick eyes. Here—say, Peters has given you his story right. I ain't no kick comin' to a word of it. But this thing has more sides to it than you'd fancy. Now, I don't just care a cuss Peters' grazin' two hundred, or five hundred ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum
... whom we must be loyal; he is our captain, and to know him is to have a direction in our lives. He feels us and knows us; he is helped and gladdened by us. He hopes and attempts. . . . God is no abstraction nor trick of words, no Infinite. He is as real as a ...
— God The Invisible King • Herbert George Wells
... puts them in our power. You were quite right—we don't want to produce this yet. But I think I can use it to scare our friend Niles. If I'm right, and he's only a fool, and not a knave, I'll be able to do the trick. Here he is now! Watch me give him the shock of ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Mountains - or Bessie King's Strange Adventure • Jane L. Stewart
... boot, we fared sumptuously. There is properly no harbor in the island. We lay in a narrow channel, through which, twice every twenty-four hours, the tides sweep powerfully in one direction, and then as powerfully in the direction opposite; and our anchors had a trick of getting foul, and canting stock downwards in the loose sand, which, with pointed rocks all around us, over which the current ran races, seemed a very shrewd sort of trick indeed. But a kedge and halser, stretched thwartwise to a neighboring crag, ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... Old Boy:—This man Reilly whom you have put upon me has just played upon me the most shamefulest trick I ever heard tell of. He invited me out to supper and told me he had only eighty cents. He ordered twenty cents worth and made me scrimp along on sixty cents. When he came to pay the check he produced a five-dollar bill! I never felt so humiliated in all my life. I ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... sunshine, whirring through the traffic of the crowded streets, neither spoke for breathlessness. Cornelius Allendyce stared at the buildings and swallowed at regular intervals to steady his nerves—a trick he had always found most helpful in important legal trials. Robin kept her eyes glued on the back of the taxi driver's head but he might have had two heads and one upside down for all she noticed. Her hands in her lap were clenched very tight and her lips were ...
— Red-Robin • Jane Abbott
... chum, heartily. "But we must be prepared to take some risks. We can't fight that crowd in the open, they are too many for us. We'll have to outwit them and put the Indians on their guard without letting the convicts suspect that we have had a finger in the pie. It would be an easy trick to turn if it were not for that renegade Indian with them. I guess there isn't anything much that escapes those black, beady ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... on the veranda, but Anne, her brothers, and Sara were at the landing as the gangway of the yacht was lowered. Ronald Wellington seized Anne by the elbows, an old trick of his, and as she stiffened them he lifted her to his face and kissed her. Ronald he slapped on the back, and as for the more sturdy little Royal, he lifted him high in the air and placed him on his shoulder, smiling and nodding pleasantly to Sara. Sara waited for ...
— Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry
... were an active sort of gentleman, and I'm an active man myself. And Sir John Fielding, Mr. Procurator-Fiscal, he's an active gentleman likewise, though he's blind as a himage, and he desired his compliments to you (sir, and said that between us he thought we'd do the trick). ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XV • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the vacated place unconsciously. Splash! and the raindrop covered his cheek with water. Dimly through his dormant brain the idea crept that he was back in the dormitory, and some one was trying the old trick of hanging a saturated sponge above his head; he had done it himself, once, and this was retribution. With a smothered grunt of discontent he gave Ramon a shove that sent him further, and rolled over into his place. ...
— The Little Gold Miners of the Sierras and Other Stories • Various
... the lion the boy placed the butt of his spear upon the ground, gave a mighty spring, and, before the bewildered beast could guess the trick that had been played upon him, sailed over the lion's head into the rending embrace of the thorn tree—safe ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... been kept in superstitious bondage by illusions and magic, and if it be now held to be right to deceive for fun how can it be held to have been wrong to deceive for religion? Those who made the people believe through practising deception doubtless believed the trick to be less harmful than unbelief. I contend, therefore, that people who go to see conjuring performances derive no good from them, but that, on the contrary, they are apt to be impressed with the idea that to practise deception is to show praiseworthy skill. It ...
— America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat • Wu Tingfang
... an excellent image of the prejudices and bigotry provoked by the idealism of a speculator. This story happily detects the trick which our imagination plays in the description of single combats: only change the preconception of the magnificence of the combatants, and all ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... men die as of yore; oxen graze, sheep bleat, babies bawl, asses bray—loud and lusty as the day before the flood. Men fight and make up; repent and go at it; feast and starve; laugh and weep; pray and curse; cheat, chaffer, trick, truckle, cozen, defraud, fib, lie, beg, borrow, steal, hang, drown—as in the laughing and weeping, tricking and truckling, hanging and drowning times that have been. Nothing changes, though much be new-fashioned: new fashions but revivals of things previous. In the ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... somebody to think of those gentler touches that we naturally forget. Some other governments have such officers—perhaps all. The Japanese, for instance, are newcomers in world politics. But this Japanese Ambassador and his wife here never miss a trick; and they come across the square and ask us how to do it! All the other governments, too, play the game of small courtesies to perfection—the French, of course, and the Spanish and—even the ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... to do such a trick, Lauchie McKitterick!" cried Mrs. Winters, shaking her fist in his face. "Harriet's been up helpin' Hannah all mornin', an' she ain't ready for him. Take him on to the station, an' we'll run up an' help her red up before he comes. An' ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith
... sprang to his feet with a whine, and then, struck by a new idea, turned his attention to Madge. Hitherto he had ignored her, but now, both masters failing him, she alone was left. He went over to her and snuggled his head in her lap, nudging her arm with his nose—an old trick of his when begging for favors. He backed away from her and began writhing and twisting playfully, curvetting and prancing, half rearing and striking his fore paws to the earth, struggling with all his body, from the wheedling eyes and flattening ears to the wagging ...
— Love of Life - and Other Stories • Jack London
... gave any directions about the flowerpots," said Young. Then the whole board broke forth. "How dare you say so? We all remember it." Still the knave stood up erect, and exclaimed, with an impudence which Oates might have envied, "This hiding is all a trick got up between the Bishop and Blackhead. The Bishop has taken Blackhead off; and they are both trying to stifle the plot." This was too much. There was a smile and a lifting up of hands all round the board. "Man," cried Caermarthen, "wouldst thou have us believe that the Bishop contrived to have ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... of Dickens that are remembered. And we remember them for the same reason that we remember certain faces which we have seen in a crowd. There is some salient feature or trick of manner which first attracts and then holds our attention. A person must have some tag by which he is identified, or, so far as we are concerned, he becomes one of the innumerable lost articles. There are ...
— Humanly Speaking • Samuel McChord Crothers
... telling Alan—he would understand. I told him of the strange sensations I had had while in the tower—sensations which had struck me with all that force and clearness which we usually associate with a direct experience of fact. "Of course it was a trick of imagination," I commented; "but I could not get rid of the feeling that the person who had dwelt there last must have had terrible thoughts for the companions of ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... Englishman's shy, silent love for her was the one event since her marriage which had left a lingering sweetness in her darkened and lonely heart. It may be that all the blighted hopes, all the frustrated longings which gradually clouded Julie's mind, gathered, by a not unnatural trick of imagination, about this man—whose manners, sentiments, and character seemed to have so much in common with her own. This idea still presented itself to her mind fitfully and vaguely, like a dream; yet from that dream, which always ended in a sigh, Julie awoke to greater ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... do that twice. The very fact that they kept half their number in reserve shows that they have some new trick to try. Otherwise they'd all have come at ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... the mating maneuver does not involve a special trick; the idea of the composer was merely to arrive at an extraordinary mating position, and he added considerably to the value of the problem by producing the same mating position in several variations. ...
— Chess and Checkers: The Way to Mastership • Edward Lasker
... man is flattered and gratified that his merits should be recognised, and Chetwynd was no exception to the general rule, but there were a good many bitters mingled with the sweets, and the hidden thorn among the rose-leaves had a nasty trick of obtruding itself. This step in social advancement materially helped his cause with Lady Ethel, and the Duchess of Huddersfield deigned to smile graciously upon ...
— If Only etc. • Francis Clement Philips and Augustus Harris
... he made his voice very deep and gruff as he replied: "Chugarum! You're a scamp, Jerry Muskrat, and Little Joe Otter is another. What trick are you trying to play on ...
— The Adventures of Jerry Muskrat • Thornton W. Burgess
... a mean trick, sir, to play on me! I'm the only one that didn't get-over," grinned the last ...
— The Submarine Boys and the Middies - The Prize Detail at Annapolis • Victor G. Durham
... be their trick," reflected he, "to get inside the canon, at its narrow part, and wait for me to come out of the cave. They would waylay me pretty handy there. Now suppose they are up the ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... the individual is interesting primarily as a center of knowing, feeling, and willing. To the sociologist the individual begins to be interesting when he is thought as knowing, feeling, and willing something. In so far as a mere trick of emphasis may serve to distinguish problems, this ictus indicates the sociological starting-point. The individual given in experience is thought to the point at which he is available for sociological assumption, when he is recognized as a center of activities which make for something ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... that he possessed secrets the disclosure of which would compromise the King: and there is nothing, however conjectural or infamous, which has not seemed to some among posterity to be probable on this ground. James I says, 'God knows it is only a trick of his idle brain, hoping thereby to shift his trial. I cannot hear a private message from him without laying an aspersion upon myself of being an accessory to ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... "Trick-work," he told himself. He set his teeth with determination. "Hope they don't see fit to cut me to pieces on suspicion. Here goes." He moved forward with a firm step until his bosom ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... heart in years gone by, and had helped him construct the sprites and train and star-trips. It was, surely, the other daughter who had played that delicious role. Yet, either his memory was at fault, or the Vicar had mixed the names up. The years had played this little unimportant trick upon him anyhow. ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... dead. So I goes for'ard and lets run the main-halliards, and down comes the sail, accidental like. The niggers gives a shout as soon as they sees this, and I hauls my wind as though I couldn't go no further to leeward without my mainsail; and, sure enough, the trick answered to perfection, for the whole posse of 'em comes scurryin' down to the beach, launches their canoes, and shoves off, paddling like mad to the south'ard, to cut me off. 'All right, my hearties, go it,' says I; 'but,' says I, 'you haven't the pleasure of knowin' a sartain ...
— For Treasure Bound • Harry Collingwood
... Intent to earn and vigilant to save— By night, attired so sightly and so smelly, With countenance as luminous as jelly, Bobbing and bowing! King of hearts and knave Of diamonds, I'd bet a silver brick If brains were trumps you'd never take a trick. ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... The trick is for the clairvoyant and his confederate to arrange between them that the person who speaks last before the clairvoyant leaves the room is the person to be ...
— Games For All Occasions • Mary E. Blain
... lighted his pipe. "I'm afraid Mason is right," he said. "I did trick you. Not purposely, however. And in the beginning I had no intention of telling anything but the truth. Actually we're here because of a ...
— The Long Voyage • Carl Richard Jacobi
... meet the beholder, with an acacia staff in his hand. He has the head and shoulders of a bull, and a common cast of countenance, whose vulgarity is not wanting in energy. The large, widely open eye has, by a trick of the sculptor, an almost uncanny ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... desert, make such an apostrophe to her ass on whom she rode; (for what knew she to the contrary, but that he was an ass?) Si me parentibus et proco formoso reddideris, quas, tibi gratias, quos honores habebo, quos cibos exhibebo? [4845]She would comb him, dress him, feed him, and trick him every day herself, and he should work no more, toil no more, but rest and play, &c. And besides she would have a dainty picture drawn, in perpetual remembrance, a virgin riding upon an ass's back with this motto, Asino ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... proceeding, answer to the equally shapeless feather sandals of the blacks who "go Kurdaitcha," that is, as avengers of blood. I have nowhere else found this practice as to the shoes, which, after all, cannot conceal the direction of the spoor from a native tracker. {37b} The trick of driving the cattle backwards answers to the old legend that Bruce reversed the shoes of his horse when he fled from the ...
— The Homeric Hymns - A New Prose Translation; and Essays, Literary and Mythological • Andrew Lang
... divine for money, and lean upon the Lord; Mic. iii. 10, 11. This is doing things with an high hand against the Lord our God, and a taking him, as it were, at the catch. This is, as we say among men, to seek to put a trick upon God, as if he had not sufficiently fortified his proposals of grace by his holy word, against all such kind of fools as these. ...
— The Jerusalem Sinner Saved • John Bunyan
... the trick," said he triumphantly. "What fools we were not to have thought of it before. I was rooting out a drawer of papers and came across the card. You remember he handed us one all round the first day we met him. I put it away—I'm rather a methodical devil with papers, ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... denounced accomplices until almost the whole population of certain districts was suspected. So frequently did they accuse their judges or their sovereign of having assisted at the witches' sabbath, that this came to be discounted as a regular trick of the devil. ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... 69. Trick-Madame, Sedum minus, Stone-Crop; is cooling and moist, grateful to the Stomach. The Cimata and Tops, when young and tender, dress'd as Purselane, is a frequent ...
— Acetaria: A Discourse of Sallets • John Evelyn
... dragged Benny Ellison's cotton shirt down behind the log. Seizing the sleeves, he proceeded to tie the thin garment into hard knots. It was the old schoolboy trick. He had had it played on him many a time in swimming—and done the same by others; but he had never entered into the prank with half the zest as now. He tugged at the knots and ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith
... of Commons last night a mine was sprung and all parties, Whigs and Tories, East and West Indians, united by a trick on the sugar duties. ...
— A Political Diary 1828-1830, Volume II • Edward Law (Lord Ellenborough)
... his eyes upon Pipes, who by this time had penetrated into his apartment, and addressed him with the usual salutation of "What cheer?" "Ahey," cried he, "are you there, you herring-faced son of a sea-calf? What a slippery trick you played your old commander! But come, you dog, there's my fist; I forgive you, for the love you bear to my godson. Go, man your tackle, and hoist a cask of strong beer into the yard, knock out the bung, and put a pump in it, for the use of all my servants and neighbours; ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... quite completely dead. All this, so easy to the mature woman, seemed a sort of conjuring-trick to her. It was thought-reading of the most advanced kind, the reading of thoughts that she had not consciously formulated. And ...
— Daisy's Aunt • E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson
... a soap box holding two children on her lap, so they could see it all, Lin was calling on Alfred to come back into the ring and repeat a twisting about trick he had just performed. Lin said the children wanted to see him do ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... to panel, he was listening again. After a long moment his whisper came once more. "I don't have time to repeat this. In about five minutes Peake'll be here with rations. I'll leave this door unlatched. There's another storage cabin across the corridor—see if you can hide there, then trick him into getting in here and lock him ...
— Star Hunter • Andre Alice Norton
... simply to gain money upon false pretences—by exciting more pity than would otherwise have been bestowed on her had she begged for herself alone, without a child in her arms. At first she had carried the baby about to serve as a mere trick of her trade, but the warm feel of its little helpless body against her bosom day after day had softened her heart toward its innocence and pitiful weakness, and at last she had grown to love it with a strange, intense passion—so much that she would willingly have ...
— Stories By English Authors: London • Various
... the warlike lugger that she saw in the bay, and to communicate more clearly with her by signals. Ithuel's expedient had not sufficed; the vigilant Captain Cuffe, alias Sir Brown, who commanded the Proserpine, not being a man likely to be mystified by so stale a trick. Raoul scarcely breathed as he watched the lugger in anticipation of ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... Antony," said the Prioress, holding the old woman with her look. "I must make sure that this twenty-first White Lady of thine is but a trick played on thee by thy peas. Should she be anywhere in the Convent I shall most ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay
... player, drops the king to Captain Higginbotham's lead of the ace of hearts. Now the captain has left queen, knave, and two other hearts, four trumps to the queen, and nothing to win a trick with in the two other suits. This hand is therefore precisely one of those in which, especially after the fall of that king of hearts in the adversary's hand, it becomes a matter of reasonable doubt whether to lead trumps or not. The captain hesitates, and not ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... There's not much we do understand, any of us. That's where I think books fall short—they explain things just as far as the writer understands. And whiles he doesna understand very far, but he's got a trick of putting things nicely. Most things you know without understanding: you do them blindly and someday you see they've been right. That's what I mean about God making us a pathway. I feel that He has been walking along my life; I couldna prove ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... a foreign service. Perhaps he sought adventure. McGee, however, made no secret of the motives back of his entrance. When word reached him that his brother had been killed while doing observation work in a captive balloon, young McGee, not yet eighteen, employed a trick (which he thought justified) to gain entrance to the Air Force. He felt that he must carry on an unfinished work, and few will find fault with him if his actions were motivated by a slight spirit of revenge. After all, blood is thicker ...
— Aces Up • Covington Clarke
... Brownie?" said Ellen "oh, he is as good as he can be; you need not be afraid of him; he has no trick at all; there never was such a good ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... interference, the penalty for any infringement of this rule to be, in the case of a noble, the loss of his hand, in the case of a churl, the loss of his head. He then addresses himself to the combatants, warning them to loyally observe the rules of battle, not by any evil art or trick of sorcery to disturb the virtue of the judgment. God is to judge them according to custom in such ordeals; in Him let them place their trust and not in their own strength. The two champions with equal readiness declare themselves prepared to obey this behest. ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... is a trick! This is a trick! I demand the immediate surrender of the government and ...
— The Tree That Saved Connecticut • Henry Fisk Carlton
... peg', and phanda, 'a noose', equivalent to the Persian tasmabaz, meaning 'playing tricks with a strap'. Creagh, a private in a British regiment at Cawnpore about 1803, is said to have initiated three men into the peg and strap trick, as practised by English rogues. These men became the leaders of three Tasmabaz Thug gangs, whose proceedings are described by Mr. R. Montgomery in Selections of the Records of Government, N.W.P., vol. i, p. 312. A strap is doubled and folded up in different ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... Miss Howe, that the circumstances of the noise and outcry within the garden-door, on Monday last, gave me no small uneasiness, to think that I was in the hands of a man, who could, by such vile premeditation, lay a snare to trick me out of myself, as I have ...
— Clarissa, Volume 3 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... Would thank my Care, and well reward it too: Nay, I'd have him do't for his own safety, That still the Murder might be thought Francisco's; You know the rest i'th' Garden. I taught besides That damn'd Old Hagg, whose fear has made me thus, To put this trick on Pedro: I bid her call him When she should hear us whistle, then in haste, And all undrest send him to Caelia's Chamber, Whilst we, let in, might meet him coming thence, Thinking the Cuckold's Rage would murder ...
— The Fatal Jealousie (1673) • Henry Nevil Payne
... will and testament, and, until all of his wishes have been duly carried out, am entitled by the terms of that will to be regarded both legally and socially as his representative. This you all know, but it is my way to make everything clear as I proceed. A lawyer's trick, no doubt. I do not pretend to ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... trick, I knew. Perhaps he had palmed a sponge wet with alcohol or some other liquid, had brushed it over the paper, making the writing visible through it, and drying out rapidly so as to leave the paper opaque again long before any of us ...
— The Treasure-Train • Arthur B. Reeve
... of course. I've heard that those city chaps have an eye on any fellow that makes a record like I'm making here. They don't want to see him get ahead. They must guess that I'm in line for a big promotion, and that might worry them into playing some tragical trick on me." ...
— Bart Stirling's Road to Success - Or; The Young Express Agent • Allen Chapman
... as ever she could make her escape she regained her garret; where Rochester, having repaired thither at the appointed hour, was fully informed of all that had passed in the bathing room. He was astonished at the audacious temerity of Hobart, in daring to put such a trick upon him; but, though he rightly judged that love and jealousy were the real motives, he would not excuse her. Little Sarah desired to know whether he had a real affection for Miss Temple, as Miss Hobart said she supposed that was the case. "Can you doubt it," ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... cruised off the mouth of the harbour, as if inviting attack. Commodore Langworth, with the Pulteney, Trial, Neptune's Prize, a bombketch, and five of the largest gallivats, was sent out. The Angrian fleet stood away to the southward, followed by Langworth. The demonstration was a trick to draw off the Bombay fighting ships. When they were well out of the way, Sumbhajee made a sudden attack on Mannajee's territories with two thousand men and forty or fifty gallivats. Sumbhajee had gained over a number of Mannajee's officers, and Alibagh, Thull, and Sagurgurh ...
— The Pirates of Malabar, and An Englishwoman in India Two Hundred Years Ago • John Biddulph
... I'll find out what it means!" snapped the Senator, pricked in his pride and in his sense of responsibility as a go-between. He pushed a button in the row on his study table. "This new job as mayor seems to be playing some sort of a devil's trick with Stewart. I'll admit, Daunt, that I didn't relish some of the priggish preachment on politics mouthed by him in his office when we were there. But I didn't pay much attention—any more than I did to his exaggerated flourish in the way he attended to city business. The new brooms! ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... haue beene Emperours, Consuls, Orators, Conquerours, famous painters or plaiers in Rome. Till this daie not a Romane (if he be a right Romane in deed) will kill a rat, but he will haue some registred remembrance of it There was a poore fellowe during my remainder ther, that for a new trick he had inuented of killing Cymess & scorpions, had his mountebank banner hung vp on a high piller, with an inscription about it longer than the king of Spaines stile. I thought these Cymesses like the Cimbrians ...
— The Vnfortunate Traveller, or The Life Of Jack Wilton - With An Essay On The Life And Writings Of Thomas Nash By Edmund Gosse • Thomas Nash
... without attempting to answer him. He turned and went towards the door, regarding me oddly over his shoulder. I followed him out with my eyes; and as I did so, by some odd trick of unconscious cerebration, there came surging into my head the phrase, "The Moreau Hollows"—was it? "The Moreau—" Ah! It sent my memory back ten years. "The Moreau Horrors!" The phrase drifted loose in my mind for a moment, and then I saw it in red lettering on a little buff-coloured pamphlet, ...
— The Island of Doctor Moreau • H. G. Wells
... 'The fact is,' she resumed, before I could reply, 'all men are arbitrary and unreasonable. They think women inferior to them, and their wives as a higher order of slaves. But I am not one to be put under any man's feet. William has tried that trick with me, and failed. Of course, to be foiled by a woman is no very pleasant thing for one of your lords of creation. A tempest in a teapot was the consequence. But I did not yield the point in dispute; and, what is more, have no ...
— Home Scenes, and Home Influence - A Series of Tales and Sketches • T. S. Arthur
... whisper—"so! What a trick for Fate to play me! And I have been wondering where on earth you had disappeared to. ...
— The Story of Bawn • Katharine Tynan
... fairly stupefied. Then I experienced a feeling of relief so vast that he must have seen the gleam of triumph in my eyes. The trick ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... descendants of Goethe. The epithet Huns is coined by people who, themselves Huns, are experiencing disappointment in their criminal attacks on the life of a sound and valorous race, because it knows the trick of parrying a fearful blow with still more fearful force. In their impotence, they take ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... always so ill apparelled, often desired him to give them leave to present him with a new habit; but seeing he would not be persuaded, they once devised a way of stealing his cassock while he was asleep. The trick succeeded, and Xavier, whose soul was wholly intent on God, put on a new habit, which they had laid in the place of his old garment, without discovering how they had served him. He passed the whole day in the ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden
... in the service of the good Thiebault, king of Navarre. One of his companions under the pitch was Friar Gomita, governor of Gallura; and another, Michael Zanche, also a Sardinian. Ciampolo ultimately escaped by a trick out of the hands of the devils, who were so enraged that they turned upon the two pilgrims; but Virgil, catching up Dante with supernatural force, as a mother does a child in a burning house, plunged with him out of their jurisdiction into the borders ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... Mr. Weil. "He got hold of some of these notes and checks, in Fern's office, and is coming to look us up to-day, for the purpose of having his employer arrested. A nice game, eh? But we will foil him, won't we? We'll show him a trick worth several of his! He's probably gone to the Hoffman House and he'll hang round till he finds me. I'll send word that I am to be home this afternoon at five. You will be there with me. We'll tackle him together. When he tells us that he has some forged paper in his possession we'll act ...
— A Black Adonis • Linn Boyd Porter
... that there is a remedy, and it is equally impossible to believe that it is a secret. The idea that some few men, by happy chance or happier temperament, have been given the secret—as if there were some sort of knack or trick of it—is wholly incredible and wrong. Religion must be for all, and the way into its loftiest heights must be by a gateway through which the peoples ...
— Addresses • Henry Drummond
... D. He played just such another trick On me as well. 79 For I had overcome a soul, Ready to hang itself, unsteady In its despair; Yes, it was given to us whole And I myself was making ready To drag't down there. 80 And lo he made it weep and weep So that ...
— Four Plays of Gil Vicente • Gil Vicente
... first time in a perfectly new gown. It is a slightly serpentine motion; and as there is nothing to show that Eve did not meet the Serpent again after she had taken to clothes, she may have learnt the trick from him. There is certainly something diabolical about it when ...
— The Primadonna • F. Marion Crawford
... those early August days to mar his run to the Canaries, except the apprehension which he felt that an accident, happening to the rudder of the Pinta,—a steering gear now for some time in use, in place of the old lateral blades,—was a trick of two men, her owners, Gomez Rascon and Christopher Quintero, to impede a voyage in which they had no heart. The Admiral knew the disposition of these men well enough not to be surprised at the mishap, ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: Explorers • Various
... on smoking his lumpy pipe! We shall hear that Milan is moving; we shall rise; we shall be hot at it; and the news will come that Milan has merely yawned and turned over to sleep on the other side. Twice she has done this trick, and the garrison there has sent five regiments to finish us—teach us to sleep soundly likewise! I say, let it be Bergamo; or be it Brescia, if you like; or Venice: she is ready. You trust to Milan, and you are fore-doomed. I would swear it with this ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the Triple Coign And the trick there's no recalling, They will haggle and hew till they hack you through And at last they lay you sprawling: When 'Hey! for the hour of the race in flower And the long good-bye to sin!' And 'Ho! for the fires of Hell gone out For the want ...
— The Song of the Sword - and Other Verses • W. E. Henley
... staring at him with wide open eyes in which tears of acute disappointment were shining. She did not dare another word because of her trick ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... Federal government has spent thirty-five hundred millions of dollars, and sacrificed three hundred thousand lives, in a contest which the legal mind dissolves into a mere mist of unsubstantial phrases; and by skill in the trick of substituting words for things, and definitions for events, the legal mind proceeds to show that these words and definitions, though scrupulously shielded from any contact with realities, are sufficient to prevent the nation ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... device. The duke had sent his carriage to fetch her. She, left alone, unable to turn to me for guidance, determined not to go; afraid to defy him—more afraid, no doubt, because she could no longer produce the necklace—had played a neat trick. She must have sent a message to the duke that she would come with her mother immediately that the necessary preparations could be made; she had then written a note to her mother to tell her that she had gone in the duke's carriage ...
— The Indiscretion of the Duchess • Anthony Hope
... mouth made a curious movement from right to left, which seemed to result from the other. These movements, however, had nothing convulsive about them, whatever may have been said notwithstanding; they were a simple trick indicative of great preoccupation, a sort of congestion of the mind. It was chiefly manifested when the general, the First Consul, or the Emperor, was maturing vast plans. It was after such promenades, accompanied by this twofold ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... a Life of John Gilbert Cooper, to whom Campbell attributes the authorship, stating that he was born in 1723, and died in 1769; he was, consequently, only three years old when the poem was printed, which would settle the question, even if his disclaimer had been merely a trick ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 67, February 8, 1851 • Various
... many Americans came along the Rosay Road that little boys learned the trick of meeting any foreign-looking persons who spoke bad French, and announced themselves as guides of all the "Messieurs Americains"; they would capture the portmanteau, swing it up to a strong shoulder, and ...
— Lafayette • Martha Foote Crow
... in the issue mentioned was an epistle from me to you recommending the Post as a means of disposing of rubbish, with special reference to worn-out foot-gear. I only wish I knew who played this trick on me, Ginger; I would like to give him something in return—say an old ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. CLVIII, January 7, 1920 • Various
... and to learn, and get more knowledge; I endeavour to walk in church order, as they call it, and therefore I hope God hath done a good work for me, and I hope will save my soul. Alas, alas! this is a very trick of the devil to make souls build the ground of their salvation upon this their strictness, and abstaining from the wickedness of their former lives, and because they desire to be stricter and stricter. Now, if you would know such a man or woman, you shall find them in this ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... trick of coming to the manse on plausible errands to Mrs. Danby and lingering until it was so dark that Alan was in courtesy bound to see her home. The ruse was a little too patent and amused Alan, although he carefully hid his amusement and treated Isabel with the fine unvarying deference which ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... obstinately, "I can fix 'em up somehow; I can do the trick and get away with it. You needn't be ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... little else. Most of these were soiled from use, but there was among them a little clean, white apron, and this Mrs. Crawford put upon the child, after having washed her face and hands and brushed her wavy hair, which had a trick of coiling itself into soft, fluffy ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... Myra, unmoved, "if the new teacher would turn out a witch. Witches always start by making themselves into young and beautiful ladies; that's their trick. Whoever heard of a teacher being ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... is the result of theory playing its usual vile trick upon the artist. It is because he is a Democrat that Whitman must have in the hatter. If you may say Admiral, he reasons, why may you not say Hatter? One man is as good as another, and it is the business ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Beleaguered City, for example—may be definitely divided into two parts; in the first, a story is told or a natural phenomenon described; in the second, the spiritual application of the parable is formally set forth. This method became with him almost a trick of style, and his readers learned to look for the haec fabula docet at the end as a matter of course. As for the prevailing optimism in Longfellow's view of life—of which the above passage is an instance—it seemed to be ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... spoke grimly, "take your turn first. That kid's got to die, and you are to do the trick, and do it ...
— Lahoma • John Breckenridge Ellis
... 'em be twenty We are strong enough to fright 'em; and by all meanes Let those that stay seek by some trick or other To make the Bridge good, that they draw it not ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various
... called upon, and examined relating to the obnoxious figures. He denied flatly that any of them were of his doing. But the master inquiring at him whose they were, he could not tell, but affirmed it to be some trick. Mr. Wilson at one time began, as I thought, to hesitate; but the evidence was so strong against M'Gill that at length his solemn asseverations of innocence only proved an aggravation of his crime. There was not one in the school who had ever been ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... smiled bitterly at this survival of the old trick, and shook her head with a meaning the old woman was far from translating. She pretended to eat a little of the furmity with the leaden spoon offered, and as she did so said blandly to the ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... disappointment to the rascals, for, save a suit of mine and some garments of my daughter's, there was naught in them. I should like to have seen the villain's face when he opened the money bags and found the trick that I had played him. He had best never show his face in London, for if I catch him he will dance at the end of a rope. And now, sirs, with your permission, I will repair to my home, for my wound ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty
... you this time," his beloved laughed; "though he declares that you are none of you to be trusted out of sight. He has just been warning me against our friend Elias, who, he says, once played a trick upon some tourists—bribed the Bedouins to take them prisoner, and let him rescue them. I assured him that Elias was not going with us; but he seemed to doubt my word, and I shall begin to doubt it myself unless those mules turn up. What has ...
— The Valley of the Kings • Marmaduke Pickthall
... occasional critics, posterity has not seen fit to endorse this view. While finding in Sidney's style the same historical importance as in Lyly's, we cannot but recognize that in itself Arcadianism was little if at all better than Euphuism. It is just as formal, just as much a trick, just as stilted and unpliable, just as painful an illustration of the fact that a figure of rhetoric may be an occasional ornament, but cannot by any degree of ingenuity be made to serve as a basis of composition. In the same way as Euphuism is founded upon a balance of the sentence obtained ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg |
