"Stock-in-trade" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... curtain when the young lady was in her knickers: oh, well, she rather roundly told them off, perhaps, but nobody minded. The fact that ladies wore knickers and black silk stockings thrilled nobody, any more than grease-paint or false moustaches thrilled. It was all part of the stock-in-trade. As for immorality—well, what did it amount to? Not a great deal. Most of the men cared far more about a drop of whiskey than about any more carnal vice, and most of the girls were good pals with each other, men were only there to act with: even if ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... "chop, chop," jack's sole stock-in-trade of that intellectual puzzle, the Chinese language, and which he finds equally serviceable this side the water, our Jehus start off like an arrow shot from a bow. What endurance these men possess, ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... chain of rings on the top of the table with the wet foot of his drinking-glass. Wretched and forlorn as he looked, Mr Slyme had once been in his way, the choicest of swaggerers; putting forth his pretensions boldly, as a man of infinite taste and most undoubted promise. The stock-in-trade requisite to set up an amateur in this department of business is very slight, and easily got together; a trick of the nose and a curl of the lip sufficient to compound a tolerable sneer, being ample provision for any exigency. But, in an evil hour, ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... the ground of conventionality, obligation, what not, entered into his misgivings. For Laurence Stanninghame had been clean disillusioned all along the line. He hadn't the shred of an illusion left. He had started life with a fair stock-in-trade of good intentions and straight ideas, and, indeed, had acted up to them honestly, and in good faith. But now?—"I've had a h——l of a time!" he would exclaim to himself, during one of those meditative gazes out seaward, for which we ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... mind affected them. I don't wish to despise or to decry his knowledge; as a lecturer, he must be invaluable; but he treats literature as a purveyor might—it has not been food to him, but material and stock-in-trade. Some of the poetry we talked about—Elizabethan lyrics—grow in my mind like flowers in a copse; in his mind they are planted in rows, with their botanical names on tickets. The worst of it is that I do not even feel encouraged to fill up my gaps of knowledge, or to master the history ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... share[248]—perhaps an excellent hygienic maxim, but one scarcely adopted on purely hygienic grounds. Such a life was an emphatic protest against the indulgence of the city, the free and careless intercourse which often reversed the position of master and slave and formed part of the stock-in-trade of the comedian. Yet, even when the bond between the man of fashion and his artful Servants had merely a life of pleasure and of mischief as its end, we Are at least lifted by such relations into a human sphere, and it is exceedingly questionable whether the warped ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... he carried on his person. His stock-in-trade consisted simply of a stout bamboo pole and a good strong rope, the usual signs of a porter; but his willingness to oblige, and the hearty, pleasant way in which he performed his arduous duties, gained him the goodwill of all who employed him. Before many ...
— Chinese Folk-Lore Tales • J. Macgowan
... until it had been laid to his charge. Couldn't he repent of his sins, whatever they were, without making a boast of them in the pulpit, and exposing them to the eyes of a whole congregation? She had known people make a stock-in-trade of their sins! What was it to them whether the washy stuff he gave them by way of sermons was his own foolishness or some other noodle's! Nobody would have troubled himself to inquire into his honesty, if he had but held his foolish ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... of course a part of the stock-in-trade of mediaeval plays. He appears in Vicente as early as 1503 (Auto dos Reis Magos). The most interesting alteration in the heavily censored (1586) edition of the Serra da Estrella is not the excision of over a hundred lines about the evil-minded hermit ...
— Four Plays of Gil Vicente • Gil Vicente
... may possibly be neither the end nor the beginning of religion, neither the final result of an evolution, euhemeristic, totemistic, or other, prolonged through countless ages and generations, nor part of the stock-in-trade of primitive man mysteriously acquired. Yet we are disposed to regard this conception as one that, amid the perpetual flux of opinion and belief which obtains among peoples destitute of written records, may be comparatively rapidly and easily arrived at under favourable conditions (such ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... before dinner to walk to the table rock, following the road along the brow of the steep bank. On the way we called in at the Curiosity Shop, kept by an old grey-haired man, who had made for himself a snug little California by turning all he touched into gold; his stock-in-trade consisting of geological specimens from the vicinity of the Falls—pebbles, plants, stuffed birds, beasts, and sticks cut from the timber that grows along the rocky banks, and twisted into every imaginable shape. The heads of ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... some fine well-heads and other sculpture, not very different from the stock-in-trade of the ordinary dealer in antiquity who has filched a palace. On the next floor is a library; but I found the entrance barred. On the next is a series of rooms, the museum proper. In the first are weapons, banners, and so forth. In the ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... intrigue; mysterious strangers, disguises, cryptic and invaluable manuscripts, urgent telegrams, codes, Italian hidden hands, Scotland Yard, pseudo-taxicabs, clues and things. But let others beware of Mr. JOHN FOSTER, a most ingenious manipulator of the old stock-in-trade and possessing a rare sense of humour. For the reader to pit his wits against the author's is, in this instance, to be completely "had" and to become under the necessity (about page 265) of taking off his hat, not only to the secret servant but to a mere minion of the ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 24, 1920. • Various
... royal stock, a certain Ramaka, or Rakama, whose name appears on his monuments. But compromise with treason has rarely a tranquillizing effect; and Pinetem's concession to the prejudices which formed the stock-in-trade of his opponents only exasperated them and urged them to greater efforts. The focus of the conspiracy passed from the Oasis to Thebes, which had grown disaffected because Pinetem had removed the seat of government to Tanis in the Delta, which was the birthplace of his grandfather, Herhor. So ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... argument if Mont St. Michel were a busy, thriving town, a commercial port, or the seat of great industries; but in a case where the only trade is that of touting, the only visitors sightseers, the only "stock-in-trade" medival remains, surely, from a practical point of view, anything which will injure these antiquities will really destroy the importance of the island, as its only value consists in its wonderful historic and ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 430, March 29, 1884 • Various
... leader. The British Socialists, on the other hand, have not abandoned it, though they must see its absurdity, probably because, though palpably and ridiculously false, the Doctrine of Increasing Misery is considered to be a useful and effective part of the Socialist agitator's stock-in-trade. ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... a self-possession which is not always found in exalted personages. That repose of manner which is commonly believed to be the heirloom of noble birth is seen quite as often in the low-born adventurer, who regards it as part of his stock-in-trade; and there are many women, and men too, whose position might be expected to place them beyond the reach of what we call shyness, but who nevertheless suffer daily agonies of social timidity and would rather face alone a charge of cavalry than make a new acquaintance. ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... business in L'Houmeau were Liberals to a man. The Cointets had tried to ruin the Sechards by accusing them of Liberalism, and by so doing gave them a plank to cling to—the Sechards should keep the Liberal business. Sell the paper indeed! Why, you might as well sell the stock-in-trade and the license!" ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... attitude would be a little cynical, but to her surprise he oozed loving-kindness. Had she known Mr. Marcus Stepney as well as Jean knew him, she would have realised that he adapted his mental attitude to his audience. He was a man whose stock-in-trade was a knowledge of human nature, and the ability to please. He would no more have attempted to shock or frighten her, than a first-class salesman would shock or ...
— The Angel of Terror • Edgar Wallace
... commonplace man. After lending his pen to all disorganizing efforts, he now lives in peace under the protecting shade of a ministerial organ. The cross of the Legion of honor, formerly the fruitful text of his satire, adorns his button-hole. "Peace at any price," ridicule of which was the stock-in-trade of his revolutionary editorship, is now the topic of his laudatory articles. Heredity, attacked by him in Saint-Simonian phrases, he now defends with solid arguments. This illogical conduct has its origin and its explanation ...
— A Daughter of Eve • Honore de Balzac
... restless, idle, and miserable in the little parlour at the Claimant's Arms, thinking that the long journey which he had made had been taken all in vain, and that there was nothing left for him in the world but to return to Kimberley, and add more diamonds to his stock-in-trade. ...
— An Old Man's Love • Anthony Trollope
... rage for books having the contents and marginal references printed in red ink. Some "go at" flowered capitals, others at broad margins. These have all a certain amount of magnificence in their tastes; but there are others again whose priceless collections are like the stock-in-trade of a wholesale ballad-singer, consisting of chap-books, as they are termed—the articles dealt in by pedlars and semi-mendicants for the past century or two. Some affect collections relating to the drama, and lay great ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... was an exception, but her connection with the movement lasted no more than five years. Of the others Shaw did not and does not now possess that unquestioning faith in recognised principles which is the stock-in-trade of political leadership:[17] and whilst Webb might have been a first-class minister at the head of a department, his abilities would have been wasted as a leader in a minority. But there was a more practical bar. The Fabians were ...
— The History of the Fabian Society • Edward R. Pease
... calling him in. I am told that such gentlemen have to coax and wheedle dowagers, to humour hypochondriacs, to practise a score of little subsidiary arts in order to make that of healing profitable. How many many hundreds of pounds has a barrister to sink upon his stock-in-trade before his returns are available? There are the costly charges of university education—the costly chambers in the Inn of Court—the clerk and his maintenance—the inevitable travels on circuit—certain expenses all to be defrayed before the possible client makes his appearance, ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... to have learned that the man with whom he had fought at Aix-les-Bains was back in London, and it seemed not improbable at that moment that he would soon hear news of his fugitive wife. When he mentioned this to the widow—who was already taking steps to sell her stock-in-trade—she immediately conceived the idea that her boy, as she called Alan, was in imminent danger, that the wife would undoubtedly turn up again, and that it was absolutely necessary for his personal safety that he should have ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... Persian, and is said to have found many admirers among its oriental readers. Whatever may be thought of its poetic merits—and I for one disclaim any scintilla of enthusiasm—or of its power in vitalizing the disjecta membra of orientalism, the stock-in-trade of the Asiatic curiosity-shop, there is no doubt that Moore worked very conscientiously upon this undertaking: he read up to any extent,—wrote, talked, and perhaps thought, Islamically—and he trips up his reader with some allusion verse after verse, tumbling him ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... its schoolboy task so seriously and solemnly, and extolled its poor stock-in-trade in such mountebank fashion, meanwhile ...
— The Communist Manifesto • Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
... her dress. "For instance, this is the result of a good deal of self-denial, though the cost of it was partly worked off in music lessons, and the stuff was almost the cheapest I could get. I sang at concerts—and it was part of my stock-in-trade. After all, why should you think me only ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... not. After a certain age, varying with the individual, all, or almost all, of us gradually move towards a condition of repugnance to new ideas—a repugnance that becomes hatred when they are inconsistent with the old theories that have grown to be part of ourselves as well as of our stock-in-trade; and when this movement has gone far we are "jaded," are unfit to estimate the value of new ideas; we are still competent to apply the old theories to plays and acting based on them, but of course cumber the ground and retard ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... Baron dearly loves is, ELLIOT STOCK-IN-TRADE The Book-worm, always most interesting to Book-worms, and almost as interesting to Book-grubs or Book-butterflies. By the way, the publishing office of The Book-worm ought to be in Grub Street. For what sort of fish is The Book-worm an attractive bait? I suppose there are queer fish ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 17, 1891 • Various
... found there. Since he first delighted us he has scarcely troubled himself once to find a new story, or a new type of character, or a new field for his descriptive powers. He took the Spanish mission into his stock-in-trade, and he has since made that as hackneyed as the rest. And yet there remains this peculiarity about him—his latest stories, are pretty nearly as good as his first. It would seem as if his interest ...
— My Contemporaries In Fiction • David Christie Murray
... chief stock-in-trade of the writer of fiction, to depict the misunderstandings which arise between two persons, through the sin of one, or the folly of both, or the villainy of a third; then comes the means by which the tangled skein is unravelled, and in ...
— Friendship • Hugh Black
... everybody should be in love with her appeared to him only proper, for he had never met her like, and assumed that it did not exist. The desire of the moth for the star seemed to him a reasonable thing, since hopeless loyalty and unrequited passion were the eternal stock-in-trade of romance. He wished he were twenty-five himself to have the chance of indulging in such sentimentality for such a lady. But Heritage was not like him and would never be content with a romantic folly.... He had been in love with her for two years—a long time. He spoke ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... fond of painting?" he caught her up, being to the full as willing to speak as she was. "So is my sister, and she also goes to 'Liberty's' for queer rags and tags. I suppose they are part of the amateur's stock-in-trade." ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... savagery, like a native woman tricked out in ridiculous pomp. Some, still grimly conservative, receive the customer in their cavernous interior, and cheat his eyes in their perpetual twilight. Many of these little shops are so small that their stock-in-trade flows over on to the pavement. The toy shops, the china shops, the cake shops, the shops for women's ribbons and hairpins seem to be trying to turn themselves inside out. Others are so reticent that nothing appears save a stretch ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... society on the Religious Exchange, and has so much the more effect upon the simple-minded, that all these partnerships in the work of salvation, which end by becoming immensely rich, begin with modest poverty as social stock-in-trade, and charity towards their neighbors as security reserve fund. We may therefore imagine what bitter and ardent rivalry must exist between the different congregations with regard to the various estates that each can lay claim to; with what ineffable ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... Faithfulness here prepares for participation in Christ's authority hereafter. For we are not to forget that whilst the master, the nobleman, was away seeking the kingdom, all that he could give his servants was the little stock-in-trade with which he started them, and that it is because he has won his kingdom that he is able to dispense to them the larger gifts of dominion over the ten and the five cities. The authority is delegated, but it is more than that— it is shared. For it is participation in, and not ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... dread hour before dinner is an awful time in the country—frightful when there are two hours, and never a subject in common for the company to work upon. Laverick Wells and their mutual acquaintance was all Sponge and Jawleyford's stock-in-trade; and that was a very small capital to begin upon, for they had been there together too short a time to make much of a purse of conversation. Even the young ladies, with their inquiries after the ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... smiling and the dusty, musty old place seemed actually to brighten in the sunshine of her presence. Her big gray eyes (they were almost blue when their owner was in an introspective mood) now sparkled as her glance swept Cap'n Abe's stock-in-trade—the shelves of fly-specked canned goods and cereal packages, with soap, and starch, and half a hundred other kitchen goods beyond; the bolts of calico, gingham, "turkey red," and mill-ends; the piles of visored caps and boxes of sunbonnets on the counter: the ship-lanterns, ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper
... melancholy-eyed man that I had pictured to myself, the ghost-dealer was a sturdy little podgy fellow, with a pair of wonderfully keen sparkling eyes and a mouth which was constantly stretched in a good-humoured, if somewhat artificial, grin. His sole stock-in-trade seemed to consist of a small leather bag jealously locked and strapped, which emitted a metallic chink upon being placed on the stone ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... money was very nearly gone; the journeys had cost so much, and she had been obliged to buy clothing for Jane and Lovel and herself at Brussels. She had spent a sovereign on colours and brushes and drawing-paper at Winsor and Newton's—her little stock-in-trade. She looked at her diamond rings meditatively as she sat brooding in the March twilight, with as vague an idea of their value as a child might have had. The time was very near when she would be obliged to turn ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... such sweeping charges against the Anglo-Indian Press as a whole are absolutely grotesque, and its most malevolent critics would be at a loss to quote anything, however remotely, resembling the exhortations to hatred and violence which have been the stock-in-trade not only of the most popular newspapers in the vernaculars, but of some even of the leading newspapers published in English, but edited and owned ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... before the autumn was out he died of a decline. This is the first case of really strong fatherly love that has come under my notice. As a rule, when their children die, the peasant's regret is for the loss of a useful chattel, and a part of their stock-in-trade, and the older the child, the heavier their sense of loss. A grown-up son or daughter is so much capital to the parents. But this poor fellow really loved that boy of his. 'Nothing cam comfort me for my loss,' he said one day when I came across ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... Now, this would be a possible argument if Mont St. Michel were a busy, thriving town, a commercial port, or the seat of great industries; but in a case where the only trade is that of touting, the only visitors sightseers, the only "stock-in-trade" mediaeval remains, surely, from a practical point of view, anything which will injure these antiquities will really destroy the importance of the island, as its only value consists in its wonderful ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 430, March 29, 1884 • Various
... for obtruding upon the reader these somewhat trite reflections; which were set going by the quaint stock-in-trade of the wig-maker's shop in the cloisters of the Inner Temple, whither I had strayed on a sultry afternoon in quest of shade and quiet. I had halted opposite the little shop window, and, with my eyes bent dreamily ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman
... brings to the morning market whatever he happens to have for sale. Some days he has a large stock-in-trade, sometimes next to nothing. But, be it little or be it much, he divides it into two lots, and slings his parcels or baskets from a light bamboo pole which rests across his shoulder, and, light as it is, often weighs more than the trifles suspended from it; perhaps ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... in the wrong place, Tommy—that boy will go on absorbing slang to the end of his days, unless you're foolish enough to shame it out of him. By the time he is ready to go on the stage he will have a stock-in-trade of slang that will be the making of him, for he is so apt and ready with it. But, tell—no, I'll tell Epstein myself—to take care that his slang does not mar the rest of his speech. He must not be allowed to get into the way of ...
— William Adolphus Turnpike • William Banks
... accustomed oath, upon which all the others cry out in their piping, shrill voices, "We swear!" As a climax, the President, Trejlhard, a sober lawyer, replies to the little gamins with perfect gravity in a similar strain, employing metaphors, personifications, and everything else belonging to the stock-in-trade of a ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... so easy to value the shop, plant, stock-in-trade, and goodwill. I have only been able to put down approximate amounts, but I don't think I have underestimated anything. Well, the total valuation which I have made comes to fifteen thousand three hundred and ten francs; your ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... carving of these letters. What was done with so much ardour, it seemed scarce possible that any should behold with indifference; and the initials would at least suggest to her my noble birth. I thought it better to suggest: I felt that mystery was my stock-in-trade; the contrast between my rank and manners, between my speech and my clothing, and the fact that she could only think of me by a combination of letters, must all tend to increase her interest and engage ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to eat meat or why a man should not attend to his business, so he had taken a sheep and a quarter of beef over there, as it was his custom to do every Tuesday, and had just disposed of the last of his stock-in-trade when up came the 7th corps and he found himself in the middle of a terrible hubbub. Everyone was running, pushing, and crowding. Then he became alarmed lest they should take his horse and wagon from him, and drove off, leaving his servant, who was just then ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... all the winkly brood I surely had been chary, If I had known they formed the food And stock-in-trade of Mary. ...
— Bab Ballads and Savoy Songs • W. S. Gilbert
... the knout and Siberia are ever present before them. Cheap chromolithographs of Gregorian saints hang on the walls of the saloon, and with them are mingled fancy pictures of Tiflis and Baku cafe-chantant belles. Long rows of vodka-bottles are the chief stock-in-trade of the place, but "peevo" (beer) can be ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... therefore to take up the study which I have found so pleasant, so healthful, and so interesting, I now propose to place in order the proceeds of a few of my rambles, and shew how much success the reader may also expect in similar expeditions. His or her stock-in-trade should consist of a good-sized note-book or sketch-book of paper not too rough for fine lines, a B B pencil of reliable quality, and a small piece of sandstone or brick to be used in rubbing off the dirt and ...
— In Search Of Gravestones Old And Curious • W.T. (William Thomas) Vincent
... hand, of course, there are companionable, sympathetic writers whose whole stock-in-trade is themselves, their personal charm, their personal way of looking at things. Of these, Montaigne and Charles Lamb are among the great examples. It matters to us little or nothing what they are writing about; for their subjects, so far as they are concerned, are only important in relation ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... prepared for a renaissance of nature and simplicity in prose. Miss Mitford's exquisite work had given them a distaste for the 'jewelled turf,' the 'silver streams,' and 'smiling valleys' which constituted the rustic stock-in-trade of the average novelist; and they eagerly welcomed a book that treated with accuracy and observation of the real country. William Howitt's straightforward, undistinguished style was acceptable enough in an age when even ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... contribute to make and repair, and not only is it a fairly complex machine in itself, but it is found in several types and patterns, and so far it has altered, and promises still to alter, steadily, by improvements in this part and that. No limited stock-in-trade of knowledge, such as suffices for a joiner or an ostler, will serve. They must keep on mastering new points, new aspects, they must be intelligent and adaptable, they must get a grasp of that permanent something that lies behind the changing immediate practice. In other words, they will ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... naturally penetrate to it. When I take up a book, and find that it is nothing but she was beautiful, he loved her, I put it down again with a groan. The monotony of the subject palls upon me. It is the stock-in-trade of every author, as if there were nothing of interest in the lives of men and women ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... mouth. He was active and nimble, and in moments of excitement much given to spitting Gaelic oaths like a wild-cat. But, spite his half-century of life, he was still the best and the most daring man of a company who had taken daring as their stock-in-trade. ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... Newtons, Bacons, Koperniks, Watts, Edisons, Shakespeares, Burkes, Keplers, Platos, Jeffersons and others who, by patient research or the outpourings of super-gifted minds have furnished forth the pedagogue's stock-in-trade? Science and Art, Philosophy and Religion—all that contributes to man's welfare, material or spiritual, originated in obscure closets and caves, in the open fields, beneath the star-domed vault of night, and during all these ages have received chief furtherance from individual genius or application, ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... with several labouring men. For obvious reasons these men, as a rule, shrink from any expression of their real feelings. Their position is apparently one of absolute dependence either upon the farmers or the landlords, there being no other local market for their labour, which is their only stock-in-trade. As one of them said to me to-day, "The farmers will work a man just as long as they can't help it, and then they throw ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (2 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... buy half your stock-in-trade, if ever he comes to his own, for what I know," said his friend; "but, David, remember your bond, and use me not as you did when my housewife had the sheep's-head and the cock-a-leeky boiling for you as late as two of the ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... in the century, when Dr. Olbers, then the highest authority on the subject, expressed the opinion that the spectacular tail, which had all along been the comet's chief stock-in-trade as an earth-threatener, is in reality composed of the most filmy vapors, repelled from the cometary body by the sun, presumably through electrical action, with a velocity comparable to that of light. This luminous suggestion was held more ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... punishment had little terror for those whose hardships could scarcely be artificially worsened. The stagger of despair, the stricken, helpless aspect of such people, their gaunt faces and blurred eyes might conceivably be their stock-in-trade, the keys wherewith they unlocked hearts and purses and area-doors. It must be so when the sun was shining and birds were singing across fields not immeasurably distant, and children in walled gardens ...
— Mary, Mary • James Stephens
... we were again alone with these wild yet interesting people. We expected our stay might be about six months, and had provided a stock-in-trade, consisting of a barrel of powder, half a dozen muskets, some fish-hooks, and a quantity of tobacco. Everything we possessed we delivered into the hands of the natives, who accounted to us for the stock thus entrusted to their management with the most scrupulous ...
— A Narrative of a Nine Months' Residence in New Zealand in 1827 • Augustus Earle
... in a Furth paper for calling upon a private soldier to fulfil such a degrading office. German workmen do not read the Vorwaerts (its circulation is well under 100,000), but they read one or other of the seventy purveyors of filth and class hatred which form the stock-in-trade of ...
— What Germany Thinks - The War as Germans see it • Thomas F. A. Smith
... been a source of great difficulty to students of the Ethics. Almost more than any other part of the work it has exercised influence upon mediaeval and modern thought upon the subject. The distinctions and divisions have become part of the stock-in-trade of would be philosophic jurists. And yet, oddly enough, most of these distinctions have been misunderstood and the whole purport of the discussion misconceived. Aristotle is here dealing with justice in a restricted sense viz as that special goodness of character ...
— Ethics • Aristotle
... at the risk of breaking their delicate edges. I did at last, however, succeed in getting some good specimens, finer than any we had yet met with. In the same shop were also some Bajans, or sea-gipsies, whose stock-in-trade consisted of a miscellaneous collection, including dried trepang, strings of very uninviting dried fish, smaller pearl-shells, little skins of animals and birds, and rattan canes in the rough, but much cheaper and better than those to be bought at Singapore ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... ideas. He offered his public, as Frank R. Stockton pointed out, the pure ore of fun. "If he puts his private mark on it, it will pass current; it does not require the mint stamp of the schools of humour. He is never afraid of being laughed at." Indeed, that is a large part of his stock-in-trade; for throughout his entire career, nothing seemed to give him so much pleasure—though it is one of the lowest forms of humour—as making fun of himself. In describing two monkeys that got into his room at Delhi, he said that when he awoke, one of them was ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... least of the problems in controlling the marauding activities of some of the nomadic tribes is the difficulty of meting out adequate punishment to peace-breakers. The fact that all the stock-in-trade of a township amounts to a few pots and pans and house material of cane matting and mud makes it impossible to impress them by destroying their houses. In a few days everything would be rebuilt as before. It could often happen that the punitive expedition arrived ...
— A Dweller in Mesopotamia - Being the Adventures of an Official Artist in the Garden of Eden • Donald Maxwell
... important one, for although characterized at the time by a reviewer in the London Athenaeum as 'ignorant, fallacious, and altogether unworthy of acceptance,' its blood-curdling stories, applied to all sorts of institutions, have formed a large part of the stock-in-trade of ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell
... carefully studied, and Mr. Yeats has this advantage over his predecessors that on occasion, e.g., in certain passages in The King's Threshold, he is able to introduce with great effect reminiscences of the characteristic epithets and imagery which formed so large a part of the stock-in-trade ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... (volkslieder), The Hunttis of Chevet. Our copy of the English version is in the Bodleian (MS. Ashmole, 48). It ends: "Expliceth, quod Rychard Sheale," a minstrel who recited ballads and tales at Tamworth (circ. 1559). The text was part of his stock-in-trade. ...
— Sir Walter Scott and the Border Minstrelsy • Andrew Lang
... way, she discovered to me that which she had treasured up of jewels and precious stones, pearls, and gold, and I bought back my houses and lands that I had squandered and my wealth became great as before. I abode thus for some time, and the factors of my father came to me and I gave them stock-in-trade, and I built me a second chamber behind the shop. One day, as I sat there, according to my custom, O Prince of True Believers, there came up to me a damsel, never saw eyes a fairer than she of favour, and said, Is this the private shop of Abu al-Hasan ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... (31), the carpenter, 'Ali Sulaymn; a "knowing dodger," who brought with him a little stock-in-trade of tobacco, cigarette-paper, ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... I must buy books! Aren't they my tools, my stock-in-trade? Haven't these lectures justified the book-bills a ...
— A Great Success • Mrs Humphry Ward
... his close-piled cheeks His paws, sequestered warm! An oak-grained panel backs his head And all the stock-in-trade is spread, A symphony in white and red, Round ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, March 18, 1914 • Various
... the elements of an enduring alliance—an alliance between Capitalism, with its great material influence, but barren of any one single exalted idea or principle on the one hand, and Jingoism, sterile, empty, soulless, but with a rich stock-in-trade of bombastic ideas and principles, prompted by the most selfish aspirations, on ...
— A Century of Wrong • F. W. Reitz
... apparently, asleep. The white apron, that was wrapped round his waist, clearly proclaimed to what class he belonged—the "Begging Tradesmen." A few things, tied to a blue handkerchief, rested on one side of his head; and a parcel of ballads, his whole stock-in-trade, lay on the other. Before the fire, warming his back, stood a short, thick-set man, humming the air of a vulgar ditty; his hands were thrust into the pockets of a velvet shooting-jacket, ornamented with large ivory buttons, such as are commonly worn by cabmen and other tap-room ...
— Sinks of London Laid Open • Unknown
... for a living—Chook by crying fish and vegetables in the streets, Jonah by making and mending for Hans Paasch, the German shoemaker on Botany Road. But Chook often lacked the few shillings to buy his stock-in-trade, and Jonah never felt inclined for work till Wednesday. Then he would stroll languidly down to the shop. The old German would thrust out his chin, and blink at him over his glasses. And he always greeted Jonah with one of two ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... void; and possibly the first also to propose the use of sealed suits that enable men to traverse a vacuum. Of the more minor twists of plot initially found here that have since become parts of the "pulp" science-fiction writers' standard stock-in-trade, there are literally too many ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putnam Serviss
... his burnt matches down anywhere, and shouted angrily if there was no soap in the bathroom—why then, when all these things were discovered, Anna simply walked up to the store one fine afternoon and set herself up in the stock-in-trade of an author, marvelling that it had never before occurred to her ...
— In the Mist of the Mountains • Ethel Turner
... hen-roosts, telling fortunes, and 'snapping up unconsidered trifles' like Autolycus of old. Pilfering, varied with a rude sort of magic, and the swindling arts of divination and chiromancy for the special behoof of credulous servant-girls, are the stock-in-trade of the modern Zingaris. Without education, and without industry, they transmit their vagrant habits to generation after generation, and perpetuate all the vices of a lawless ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... when the rain set in early and walking was impossible, I found my way to the shop of an old dealer in bric-a-brac. It was not a monotonous display, after the manner of the Parisian dealer, of a stock-in-trade the like of which one has seen many times over, but a discriminate collection of real curiosities. One seemed to recognise a provincial school of taste in various relics of the housekeeping of the last century, with many a gem of earlier times from the old ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Horatio Pater
... yet, when we find it hard to believe that they—actually they themselves, that we know now—can have done the things imputed to them. If the stories are really true, were they not possessed by evil spirits? Or have they since come to be possessed by better ones than their normal stock-in-trade? ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... group. Bird-catchers, at any rate, without troubling to inquire into the reason, turn the instinct to profitable account, and in some parts of the country a stuffed owl is an important item of their stock-in-trade. ...
— Birds in the Calendar • Frederick G. Aflalo
... containing proof that Wierus himself was a sorcerer; not one of the wisest, certainly, since he thus unnecessarily placed at the disposal of any who might buy the book the whole secrets which formed his stock-in-trade. ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... Mr. Sale Lloyd's Scamp depends on one of those misunderstandings which is the stock-in-trade of second-rate novelists. Captain Egerton falls in love with Miss Adela Thorndyke, who is a sort of feeble echo of some of Miss Broughton's heroines, but will not marry her because he has seen her ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... resembled the jump from surprise into stillness when the jungle is caught unawares. A second later when somebody tossed dry fagots on the fire the blaze betrayed no other expression on their faces than the stock-in-trade stolidity. Even the women looked as if thundering on a kahveh door at night was nothing to be noticed. Kagig did not move, but I could see that he was breathing faster than the normal, and he, too, clutched a weapon. Von Quedlinburg began shouting for help alternately ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... their own great personal danger. At any rate, it complemented my work at St. Stephen's, and doubtless contributed to a reputation in the House which I did not gain through my oratory. I could therefore bring to editors the stock-in-trade of a fairly accurate knowledge of current political issues, an appreciation of personalities, and a philosophical subrident estimate of the bubbles that are for ever rising on the political surface. I found Finch of The Universal Review, James of The Weekly, and one or two others more than ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... talisman that will apply to all cases, in that one holy book, the Koran. This is his complete pharmacopoeia: his medicine chest, combining purgatives, blisters, sudorifies, styptics, narcotics, emetics, and all that the most profound M.D. could prescribe. With this "multum in parvo" stock-in-trade the Faky receives his patients. No. 1 arrives, a barren woman who requests some medicine that will promote the blessing of childbirth. No. 2, a man who was strong in his youth, but from excessive dissipation has become useless. No. 3, a man deformed from his birth, who wishes to become straight ...
— In the Heart of Africa • Samuel White Baker
... shower commenced to fall; and he promised Poisson half shares in the profit of it, and even borrowed twenty franc pieces of him to defray the cost of experiments. Meanwhile the shop melted away on his tongue. All the stock-in-trade followed suit down to the chocolate cigars and pipes in pink caramel. Whenever he was stuffed with sweetmeats and seized with a fit of tenderness, he paid himself with a last lick on the groceress in a corner, who found him all sugar with lips which ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... cracking of the wild hunter's whip, and we hear the loud hallo and huzza of his band, and see them galloping across our path in the eerie mysterious moonlight. Yes, in "Atta Troll" there is plenty of that moonshine, of that tender sentimentality, which used to be the principal stock-in-trade of the German Romanticist. ...
— Atta Troll • Heinrich Heine
... for pence and half pence of the time of Louis XVI. are still in circulation. After a time this Auvergnat, a match for five ordinary Auvergnats, bought up old saucepans and kettles, old picture-frames, old copper, and chipped china. Gradually, as the shop was emptied and filled, the quality of the stock-in-trade improved, like Nicolet's farces. Remonencq persisted in an unfailing and prodigiously profitable martingale, a "system" which any philosophical idler may study as he watches the increasing value of the stock kept by ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... discussions relating to the attitude of the Church towards economic questions, that it is important that its precise foundation and extent should be carefully studied. The usury prohibition has been the centre of so many bitter controversies, that it has almost become part of the stock-in-trade of the theological mob orators. The attitude of the Church towards usury only takes a slightly less prominent place than its attitude towards Galileo in the utterances of those who are anxious to convict it of error. ...
— An Essay on Mediaeval Economic Teaching • George O'Brien
... Illuminati appear wholly admirable, of course there is nothing easier than to find innumerable passages in their writings breathing a spirit of the loftiest aspiration, and of course many excellent men figured amongst the patrons of the Order. All this is the mere stock-in-trade of the secret society leader as of the fraudulent company promoter, to whom the first essentials are a glowing prospectus and a long list of highly respectable patrons who know nothing whatever about the inner workings of the concern. These methods, ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... threshold. The shop was hardly more expressive inside than out. A broad counter ran across it, cutting it in two, and in the partial gloom overhead a naked gas-burner whistled a noisy song. Beyond this the shop contained no furniture whatever, and no stock-in-trade except a few planks leaning against the wall in one corner. There was a large ink-stand on the counter. Eustace waited patiently for a minute or two, and then as no one came he began stamping on the floor with his foot. This proved efficacious, for soon he heard the sound of ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... took the form of long rhyming poems; not because the people in those days were so poetical—indeed, some of these poems would be thought, in present times, very dreary doggerel—but because rhyme is easier to remember than prose. Story-tellers had generally much the same stock-in-trade—stories of Arthur, Charlemagne, Sir Guy of Warwick, Sir Bevis of Southampton, and so on. If a minstrel had skill of his own, he would invent some new episode, and so, perhaps, turn a compliment to his patron by introducing the exploit of an ancestor, at the same time ...
— Stories from Le Morte D'Arthur and the Mabinogion • Beatrice Clay
... from an interview with Miss Mirabelle Starkweather. Her acquaintance with him was slight, but from a distance she had always esteemed him, partly for his mature good-looks, and partly for the distinguished manner which had always been a large fraction of his stock-in-trade, and was now to be listed among his principal assets. Her esteem, however, applied to him merely as an individual, and not ...
— Rope • Holworthy Hall
... one feels instinctively that some day he will throw the whole lot at our heads. I am quite prepared to admit that, if he had any rare or really superior goods to offer, his advertising methods might be profitable, but William's stock-in-trade has for many years been imported, and exported under two labels, namely the principles of '89 and ...
— The Schemes of the Kaiser • Juliette Adam
... would go into the shop and throw his money about, buying up a whole knapsack full of things. And when he went back up the road again, it was with a whole little stock-in-trade of his own—and he would stop at Sellanraa on the way and open his pack and show them. Notepaper with a flower in the corner, and a new pipe and a new shirt, and a fringed neckerchief—sweets for the womenfolk, ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... dragging his pellet out of a rut; the Sphex (A species of Hunting Wasp. Cf. "Insect Life": chapters 6 to 12.—Translator's Note.) cutting up her Fly so as to be able to carry him despite the obstacle of the wind; and all the other fallacies which are the stock-in-trade of those who wish to see in the animal world what is not really there. In this way, again, materials will be prepared which will one day be worked up by the hand of a master and consign hasty and unfounded theories ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre
... corner may be found here, inasmuch as these gambols were characteristic of him at the pleasant old season, and were frequently renewed in future years. "The best of it is" (31 Dec. 1842) "that Forster and I have purchased between us the entire stock-in-trade of a conjuror, the practice and display whereof is entrusted to me. . . . In those tricks which require a confederate I am assisted (by reason of his imperturbable good humour) by Stanfield, who always ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... wrong. No tyrant has ever yet succeeded in his purpose without carrying the victim with him, it may be, as it often is, by force. Most people choose rather to yield to the will of the tyrant than to suffer for the consequences of resistance. Hence does terrorism form part of the stock-in-trade of the tyrant. But we have instances in history where terrorism has failed to impose the terrorist's will upon his victim. India has the choice before her now. If then the acts of the Punjab Government be an insufferable wrong, ...
— Freedom's Battle - Being a Comprehensive Collection of Writings and Speeches on the Present Situation • Mahatma Gandhi
... bar he met a philanthropist who bought up his whole stock-in-trade. The stout seaman was utterly unprepared for such kindness, and stood looking at him dumbly, his lips all a-tremble with ...
— The Skipper's Wooing, and The Brown Man's Servant • W. W. Jacobs
... Jean Jacques Rousseau, conveniently adjacent to Battalion Headquarters, was appropriated for that gregarious band, the regimental signallers and telephone section; while a suitable home for the Anarchists, or Bombers, together with their stock-in-trade, was found in the basement of a remote dwelling on ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)
... tall, thin man came to the table, and laid his hand on Dick Carleton's shoulder. So doing, he stood looking straight into Madame d'Ambre's face. She started a little, and blushed deeply. Blushes were a great stock-in-trade with Madame d'Ambre. They proved that, unlike Clotilde et Cie., she did not paint her face: that she was altogether a different order of being. But this blush was less successful than usual. It was a flush of annoyance, and showed that she ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... confederates? The Germans, at least, do not seem to have trusted one another; no prince dared show ordinary courtesy to the ruling family of France, no statesman could visit Paris but voices would be heard crying that he had sold himself and his country. An accusation of this kind was the stock-in-trade which the Nationalist press was always ready to bring against every ruler who was obnoxious to them. It required moral courage, if it also shewed political astuteness, when Bismarck proposed deliberately to ...
— Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire • James Wycliffe Headlam
... a cupboard which was in a corner of the room, his eyes following me as I moved. It was full of clothing,—garments which might have formed the stock-in-trade of a costumier whose speciality was providing costumes for masquerades. A long dark cloak hung on a peg. My hand moved towards it, apparently of its own volition. I put it on, its ample folds falling ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... aids his hearers by constant repetition of the same term; the writer avoids this lest he prove monotonous. The short sentences of four or five words interposed to break the torrent—the repetition of the same words—the see-saw of black and white, old and young, base and pure—all these are the stock-in-trade of the rhetorician, not of the master of written prose. Now, Macaulay was a rhetorician, a consummate rhetorician, who wrote powerful invectives or panegyrics in massive rhetoric which differed from speeches mainly in ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... is no stock-in-trade to start out on. You sulk at the first mention of a man's name. I shall see hundreds in London. You will see as many women. I am only a little country girl staying with a great Princess, while you will be the heir to an earldom, besides having all the prestige of the uniform. Oh, I shall like ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... of this simple formality Stein inherited the Scotsman's privileged position and all his stock-in-trade, together with a fortified house on the banks of the only navigable river in the country. Shortly afterwards the old queen, who was so free in her speech, died, and the country became disturbed by various pretenders to the throne. Stein joined the party of a ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... go, and gave him a Terence to amuse him on the way, though I do not know what this melancholy Greek could have in common with that lively African.' Leontio was killed by lightning on his return voyage; and there was much anxiety until it could be ascertained that his literary stock-in-trade had been rescued from the hands of the sailors. It was not till the end of the century that Chrysoloras renewed the knowledge of the classics: but we may regard the austere Leontio as the chief precursor of the crowd of later ...
— The Great Book-Collectors • Charles Isaac Elton and Mary Augusta Elton
... greatly dare and are prepared to play the games of Speculation and of Patience; nor, on the other hand, would one choose an open cart at the beginning of the Whitechapel Road, or one of the shops in Seven Dials, whose stock-in-trade consists wholly of three or four boxes outside the door filled with odd volumes at twopence apiece. As for "pitch" or situation, one would wish it to be somewhat retired, but not too much; one would not, for instance, ...
— In Luck at Last • Walter Besant
... Arthur Wynn, who was seated rather despondingly in front of the collection of boxes, pots, and pails, which formed their stock-in-trade for bush life. Sam Holt and Robert were walking on before the horse, a furlong ahead; but Arthur had dropped behind for meditation's sake, and taken up his residence on the waggon for awhile, with his cap drawn over his eyes. I dare say Miss Bell had something to do with the foolish boy's ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... order to get to work, or it has to lay out money, in building up a concern by advertising or otherwise. It is impossible that every penny which is put into it will go into actual buildings, plant, machinery, and stock-in-trade. ...
— War-Time Financial Problems • Hartley Withers
... the American horizon to be treated to an occasional gibe; and the doings of fashionable Americans in London are reported somewhat fully. Still, on the whole, the American daily press is typified by the specimen I have analysed. Sensations, personalities and fiction are its stock-in-trade. Why? The causes are well known, but are worth recapitulating, for they are part of the system ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... everything. Nay, more: not only is the matter indifferent, but it is the secret of Art to 'eradicate the matter by means of the form,'"—phrases and statements like these meet us everywhere in current criticism of literature and the other arts. They are the stock-in-trade of writers who understand of them little more than the fact that somehow or other they are not "bourgeois." But we find them also seriously used by writers whom we must respect, whether they are ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... one of these houses was a small grimy shop, which, judging by the visible stock-in-trade, dealt on a much larger scale in iron and steel ware that was old and rusty, than in iron and steel ware that was new and bright. Before the counter no customer appeared; behind it there stood alone a squalid, bushy browed, hump-backed man, as dirty as the dirtiest ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... and jeered at. Not a shred of self-respect is left to it. It is made the central figure of every farce, danced and sung round in every music-hall, yelled at by gallery, guffawed at by stalls. It is the stock-in-trade of every comic journal. Could any god, even a Mumbo Jumbo, so treated, hold its place among its votaries? Every term of endearment has become a catchword, every caress mocks us from the hoardings. Every tender ...
— Tea-table Talk • Jerome K. Jerome
... the merchandise—the cross, emblem of sacrifice, emblem of divine compassion, divine providence and humility! I must be excused if I saw here something more than happy coincidence, if I fell into a mood of dangerous exaltation. I embraced my new career with fervour, I embraced my stock-in-trade. "Oh, thou unique and venerable wood," I cried, "often as thou hast been carried into men's affairs, in the forefront of red battle, to preside over the consecrations of pontiffs and emperors, to abase kings, to lend criminals ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... very fine fellow indeed. Mr. Screw felt that it would be hard to tell such a man to his face that he was not altogether satisfied of his identity. But then, as the lawyer reflected, swindlers are generally fine fellows; indeed, their imposing appearance is often their whole capital and stock-in-trade. Mr. Screw had a profound knowledge of mankind, and he immediately determined upon his course of action, which should be cautious, but at the same time honest and straightforward. After a preliminary exchange of civilities, ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... consequences. He had lived for the day, and the day only; he had got to the lowest peg on the medical scale; and any change would be an improvement. He carried with him an incomplete case of instruments, a wire-strung banjo, and a fine taste in liquor and merriment as stock-in-trade, and if any of the many shapes which Death assumes in the Congo region came his way, why there he was ready to ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... skin that hath always been a trouble to me. For I thought it unmanly and like a girl's. And that same skin of mine is, perhaps, the reason why all my days I never could abide your buttermilk-and-roses girls, having a supply about me enough to serve a dozen, and therefore thinking but little of their stock-in-trade. ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... in addition—but these things that were to be the real salvation of him he did not reckon—his gift of laughter, sadly repressed of late, and the philosophic outlook and mercurial temperament which are the stock-in-trade of your adventurer ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... wicked trade with the babies they get from Paris. All the inhabitants have ended by taking to it, there's nothing else doing in the whole village, and you should just see how things are arranged so that there may be as many funerals as possible. Ah! yes, people don't keep their stock-in-trade on their hands. The more that die, the more they earn. And so one can understand that La Couteau always wants to take back as many babies as possible ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola |
