"Trick" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... thing—everybody's lookin' for it and everybody's got it! Some guys knows just where to put their hands on it when they get the big chance to crack the safe of fame and as a result they become boss bankers or boss bricklayers—either of which is a trick and hard to do. Other guys forget the first three numbers or somethin' and never get better than John Smiths in ...
— Alex the Great • H. C. Witwer
... Another miracle is recorded which, for the saint's reputation, one would hope was a pure invention of the chronicler, since if it were true it might lay her open to the charge of performing an easy trick with phosphorus in order to gain credit for miraculous power. It is said that one night when it was her turn to read the lesson the lamp which she held in her hand went out, but that her fingers became luminous and shed sufficient light upon the book to enable her to read the lesson to the ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: A Short Account of Romsey Abbey • Thomas Perkins
... all differences to the categories of the Inferior and Superior. The fallacy of such division appears when we ask, Superior in what? Inferior in what? Anybody can be a superior person if he can only choose his ground and stick to it. That is the trick that royal personages have understood. It is etiquette for kings to lead the conversation always. One must be a very stupid person not to shine ...
— By the Christmas Fire • Samuel McChord Crothers
... second book came a third, "The Putnam Hall Champions," with more bitterly-contested games, in one of which young Major Ruddy's enemies played him a foul trick. ...
— The Mystery at Putnam Hall - The School Chums' Strange Discovery • Arthur M. Winfield
... inspiration from an emotion which all praised as the supreme value; even if he had no earthly mistress, he adored the sublime sentiment. Not infrequently it happened that a troubadour who had been loud in praise of high love and denunciation of base desire—a trick of his trade—suddenly came to himself and changed his mind. Folquet of Marseilles, for instance, after more than ten years of vain sighing, came to the conclusion that he ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... loving kick at Solomon. "And one man was so mad when I told him 'nothing doing' that he had me arrested. Said I had stolen the dog from him. You see there's some class to old Sol but there isn't much to me. The judge didn't know which of us was lying until I told him that Sol was a trick dog and would the man who was trying to put one over on me run through his tricks to show they had worked together. The cuss turned green and stammered that he wasn't no animal tamer. The judge gave me a chance and we had a great performance in the courtroom. When it was over the judge said he ...
— Mary Rose of Mifflin • Frances R. Sterrett
... who are wearing life away in feverish anxiety of fame, and the last we shall ever hear of them will be the funeral bell, that tolls them to their early graves! Unhappy men, and unsuccessful! because their purpose is, not to accomplish well their task, but to clutch the 'trick and fantasy of fame'; and they go to their graveswith purposes unaccomplished and wishes unfulfilled. Better for them, and for the world in their example, had they known how to wait! Believe me, the talent of success is nothing more than doing ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... will perhaps interest you still more, here is a cutting on the subject from a Vienna newspaper, which I will now read to you, translating as I go. You can see for yourselves; it is printed in the German character.' And he held the cutting out for verification, much as a conjuror passes a trick orange along the ...
— The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... But stars and seas. Then, as in hundred-citied Crete She landed,—"O my sire!" she said, "O childly duty! passion's heat Has struck thee dead. Whence came I? death, for maiden's shame, Were little. Do I wake to weep My sin? or am I pure of blame, And is it sleep From dreamland brings a form to trick My senses? Which was best? to go Over the long, long waves, or pick The flowers in blow? O, were that monster made my prize, How would I strive to wound that brow, How tear those horns, my frantic eyes Adored but now! Shameless ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace
... my head since then— Was quite myself since then: for first, you see, I lost all credit after that event With those who recollect how sure I was Wentworth would outdo Eliot on our side. Forgive me: Savile, old Vane, Holland here, Eschew plain-speaking: 'tis a trick I keep. ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... such artifices as these she frequently succeeded with the innocent and the unwary, and set one acquaintance and even one friend against another, without any sort of advantage to herself but the mere pleasure of making mischief. Another trick which she often employed for that purpose, was to examine into a young gentleman or lady's constitutional foibles (for we all have some) and when she had discovered these, to go immediately to the person and tell him or her, that master or miss such a one had ...
— Vice in its Proper Shape • Anonymous
... and his wife's father, and said he would travel no more. But after a time he got weary of biding quiet here, and weary of her—he was not a good husband to the young lady by any means—and he betook himself again to his old trick of roving—with her money. Away he went, quite out of the realm of human foot, into the bowels of Asia, and never was heard of more. He was murdered, it is said, but nobody knows; though as that was nine years ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... expect you," said the lady, always with a slight Cockney accent. "But I thought how silly it would be for me to miss the vanishing trick just because you couldn't come. So in I went, ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett
... read my uncle's riddle,' said Stanley. 'The cautious old soldier did not care to hint to me that I might hand over to you this passport, which I have no occasion for; but if it should afterwards come out as the rattlepated trick of a young Cantab, CELA NE TIRE A RIEN. You are therefore to be Francis Stanley, with this passport.' This proposal appeared in effect to alleviate a great part of the difficulties which Edward must otherwise have encountered at every turn; and accordingly ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... but I love you from that dark crown of yours to those little feet that tap the floor so impatient sometimes. I love you all the time, no matter what mood you're in—when you flash dark angry eyes at me and when you laugh in that slow, understanding way nobody else in God's world has the trick of. Makes no difference to me whether you're glad or mad, I want you just the same. That's the reason why I'm going to make you ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine
... have this trick of your fancy you will just fidget yourself sick! I see it. Just as you went driving all about Melbourne without company to take care of you. I am sure I don't know. It is not in my way to meddle with overseers—How many people do you want ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... boarding-house for the dowdy servant-girl's return—such dirty, unkempt steps as they were, and such a dingy door-plate, spotted with rain and dust, not like Malachi's, he thought—he could hardly restrain himself from beating Juba with his foot, a plantation trick Malachi had taught him, keeping time the while with the palms of his hands on his ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... chiefly occupied in preparing and pointing out the way—the only way—of procuring knowledge. He left to others to systematize the knowledge after it was got; but the pride and indolence of the human spirit lead it constantly to build systems on imperfect knowledge. It has the trick of filling up out of its own fancy what it has not the diligence, the humility, and the honesty, to seek in nature; whose servant, and articulate ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... bagatelle; [3] but what particularly weighed upon my mind was that I did not choose to lend the light of my countenance in that illustrious sphere to some miserable plume-plucked scarecrow. All these considerations made me devise a pleasant trick, for the increase of merriment and the diffusion of ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... declared, that for her part, sooner than leave her poor Cecilia to the mercy of such people, she had made up her mind to submit to the smuggler's demands. Cecilia also begged so earnestly, that Miss Ossulton, who had no idea that it was a trick, with much ...
— The Three Cutters • Captain Frederick Marryat
... five o'clock, we gave a small fee to the Dane, who still kept chuckling at the capital trick he had played us with the split ceiling, and we left Rosenberg ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... said quite seriously, "I'm only too sorry your trick should have had such a disastrous conclusion. Who shall I ask for up at the house, and what shall ...
— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker
... maybe he bites," warned the anxious conductor. "I wager this is some boy's trick to ...
— Ruth Fielding of the Red Mill • Alice B. Emerson
... regards her amazing fondness for drooping the corners of her characters' mouths, generally either "wistfully" or "sullenly." It only made one annoyed when Beatrix's unpleasant sisters developed the trick, but when poor little Beat herself was affected that way, in spite of the magnificent courage with which she faced the burden of deputy-motherhood, it made one miserable as well. The task she had undertaken was a prodigious one, for the sisters she had to rear were, you must ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 3, 1917 • Various
... Heaven shall give permission: 420 Like sentries that must keep their destined stand, And wait the appointed hour, till they're relieved. Those only are the brave who keep their ground, And keep it to the last. To run away Is but a coward's trick: to run away From this world's ills, that at the very worst Will soon blow o'er, thinking to mend ourselves, By boldly venturing on a world unknown, And plunging headlong in the dark;—'tis mad! No frenzy ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... 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 is strange ...
— America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat • Wu Tingfang
... 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 ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... continual peril, whether by fire at a time of feast, of which there are numerous examples, besides the classic one on which Biarea-mal is founded and the not less famous one of Hamlet's vengeance, or whether by steel, as with Hiartuar, or by trick, as in Wicar's case above cited. The reward for slaying a king is in one case 120 gold lbs.; 19 "talents" of gold from each ringleader, 1 oz. of gold from each commoner, in the story of Godfred, known as Ref's gild, "i.e., Fox tax". In the case of a great king, Frode, his ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... happened, the enemy infantry madly dashed across. Simultaneously the Italian floating batteries opened a terrific fire. Practically every morning the Austrians tried the trick, and every morning they failed, with heavy losses, to effect a crossing. At last they gave up the attempt as hopeless, and the armies remained locked on the ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... get for catching him, and then she dug out. I'm worth almost as much as you be now, Joey, and that there mean Dan, who wouldn't stay by and help me, he ain't got a cent. Now don't you wish you hadn't played that trick on me this morning?" ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume VIII, No 25: May 21, 1887 • Various
... had not been for naught; he knew a trick or two. As if stunned by the fall, he relaxed and lay motionless. Seeing this, the man took time to plant his knees on the boy's chest before moving his horny hands toward ...
— The Blue Envelope • Roy J. Snell
... sometimes at night for the last act. I have a friend who buys a ticket for the first part, and he comes out and gives to me his pass-back check, and I return for the last act. That is convenient if I am broke." He explained the trick with amusement but without embarrassment, as if it were a shift that we might any of ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... put my lips just where hers had been. Never had water tasted so sweet! I was taking it in, in long, cool swallows, when a sudden pressure on the back of my head bobbed my face deep into the spring. I turned my head with a smile, to find her standing back and laughing like a child at the trick she had played. ...
— The Love Story of Abner Stone • Edwin Carlile Litsey
... see the folly of your ways — I am very sorry to say the young man, whom you have this day acknowledged, has more grace and religion, by the gift of God, than you with all your profane learning, and repeated opportunity — I do think he has got the trick of the eye, and the tip of the nose of my uncle Loyd of Flluydwellyn; and as for the long chin, it is the very moral of the governor's — Brother, as you have changed his name pray change his dress also; ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... sure that papa played the trick on Grandma, about the whipping, that is related in "The Adventures of Tom Sayer": "Hand me that switch." The switch hovered in the air, the peril was desperate—"My, look behind you Aunt!" The old lady whirled ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... gorgeous, fur-trimmed dressing-gown over the foot of her narrow, iron cot; all the ridiculous necessities that Betty's maid had put into her trunk. Yes, Betty hated it all because it was what she had always thirsted for. What a malevolent trick of fate that Jasper should have brought her to Wyoming, that the doctor had insisted upon at least a month of just this life. "Take her West," he had said, and Betty, lying limp and white in her bed, her ...
— The Branding Iron • Katharine Newlin Burt
... to fight at Laval! I might trick you at first, but you always ended by giving me ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... years had waited for his revenge, and even though his wife now pleaded that he forego it, the Master of Schonburg was in no mind to comply, though he said little in answer to her persuading. The incoming of Elsa to the castle merely convinced him that some trick was meditated on the part of the Outlaw, and the sentimental consideration urged by the Countess had small weight with him. He gave a curt order to his captain to double his guards around the stronghold, and relax no vigilance until the case of the ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... and cowardices, bitterly regretting the wasted moment or the lost opportunity? Gwen's fault was indeed being visited heavily upon her shoulders. She had sown the wind and reaped the whirlwind. She felt keen resentment against Netta. It was a dastardly trick to have played upon her. Netta might at least have warned her that the bill was to be sent on to Miss Roscoe—then she could have been prepared for the worst. It was surely mere spite on the part of her friend, who, having quarrelled ...
— The Youngest Girl in the Fifth - A School Story • Angela Brazil
... the semblance of a dog, and sat up and begged for pardon. It was a trick which made people "shriek with laughing;" but Mrs. Dennistoun's gravity remained unbroken. Perhaps her extreme seriousness had something in it that was rather ridiculous too. It was a relief when he went off to his supper, attended by Elinor, and Mrs. Dennistoun was ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... back against a rock with great gravity, put his hands in his pockets, looked discontentedly at the ground, and began: "You see, boys, old Parson Withholder had heard all these yarns about Polly and thet trick-goat, and he kinder reckoned that she might do for some one of his tablows. So he axed her if she'd mind standin' with the goat and a tambourine for Jephthah's Daughter, at about the time when old Jeph comes home, sailin' in and vowin' he'll kill the first thing he sees,—jest as ...
— Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... tricks they were new tricks. He got the pull on the public. He could do his tricks before grown men, great bearded fighting men who could win battles and sing Psalms. But this modern conjuring is all behind the times. That's why they only do it with schoolboys. There isn't a trick on that table I don't know. The whole trade's as dead as mutton; and not half so satisfying. Why he [pointing to the CONJURER] brought out a bowl of goldfish just now—an old trick ...
— Magic - A Fantastic Comedy • G.K. Chesterton
... plumped in the easy-chair by the fireplace. "You know, I never thought of that," he goes on. "He's been shut up in that basket for over an hour, and if by any chance he'd managed to get his head entangled in the clothes—I'll never do such a fool's trick again!" ...
— The Observations of Henry • Jerome K. Jerome
... with some news. "Malcolm MacPherson is leaving on the 7:30 train for the west," he said. "He has rented the Avonlea place and he's off. They say he is mad as a hatter at the trick Olivia played on him." ...
— Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... arrival speedily finds out that to a certain extent his comfort depends upon himself. No man can make a bad thing good or trick himself into believing that suffering is pleasure. If pain be not an evil, it is an exceedingly good imitation, and the wisest philosopher is just as restless under the toothache as the most ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... and gave us a certain herb, which they made signs to us to eat. My comrades not taking notice that the blacks ate none of it themselves, thought only of satisfying their hunger, and ate with greediness. But I, suspecting some trick, would not so much as taste it, which happened well for me; for in little time after, I perceived my companions had lost their senses, and that when they spoke to me, they knew not what ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 1 • Anon.
... a nag out of our stables to do the trick on the downs, and av' we does it iver, it'll be now. Mr Igoe's standing a deal of cash on him. I wonder is Mr Blake standing much on him, ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... its sleeping mother's breast," rejoined another. "Mother Demdike has often played that trick ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... that wouldn't get back her four thousand. To think of a man turning a trick like that at the expense of a young girl who had just lost her father! It doesn't seem as though there could be such a mean fellow ...
— The Radio Boys' First Wireless - Or Winning the Ferberton Prize • Allen Chapman
... of memory! The lessons of life we forget, While a trifle, a trick of color, In the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... the stem of his pipe, preparatory to re-filling the bowl. There was a quizzical light in his black eyes. The little heap of burned matches at his elbow was growing to kindling wood proportions. It was common knowledge that Blackie's trick of lighting pipe or cigarette and then forgetting to puff at it caused his bill for matches to exceed his tobacco ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... down to Hank, and he was to make his mark, fur he couldn't write, and they was to be pulled up agin. Hank, he says all right, and they done it. But jest as Hank was making his mark on the leaf of the book, that preacher done what I has always thought was a mean trick. He was lying on the floor with his head and shoulders into that hole as fur as he could, holding a lantern way down into it, so as Hank could see. And jest as Hank made that mark he spoke some words over him, and then ...
— Danny's Own Story • Don Marquis
... benumbing sweetness that was now creeping over her sense and spirit and holding her fast. She felt she ought to listen no longer—to speak—to say something—to get up—to turn and confront him coldly—but she was powerless. Her reason told her that she had been the victim of a trick—that having deceived her once, he might be doing so again; but she could not break the spell that was upon her, nor did she want to. She must know the culmination of this confession, whose preamble ...
— From Sand Hill to Pine • Bret Harte
... enough of this insolence from him!" thinks he. "Suppose I make use of a little diplomacy, and play him some sort of a trick!" ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... the trump that will lose us the trick. Treat him civilly; yes, even cordially, if you can. And don't insult him as you did the first time you and ...
— Cap'n Warren's Wards • Joseph C. Lincoln
... "I learned the trick from a little Italian who kept a clothing store in the Bowery. It was the only useful thing ...
— The Gem Collector • P. G. Wodehouse
... know that they are in the habit of making war in a thoroughly ungentlemanly manner, and we cannot make up our minds whether our "attitude" is causing them to hesitate, or whether they are not devising some new trick to take us by surprise. That they are starving, that their communications with Germany are cut off, that their leaders are at loggerheads, that the Army of the Loire will soon be here to help us to demolish ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... as he had called it, of Essex and Waller, and quicken immediately the tramp of affairs. His belief all along had been that what was needed in England was an importation of Scottish impetuousness to animate the heavy English, and teach them the northern trick of carrying all things at the double with a hurrah and a yell. It was a sore affliction, therefore, to the good man that, from January 1643-4, on through February, March, April, May, and even June, the 21,000 Scots under Leslie should be in England, and yet be stirring so little. Instead ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... of eloquence. We have had others who had this gift in the highest degree, but never reached even one of the lower offices in the government. Sometimes a young politician will go to a professional teacher to get cured of some defect or trick of speech; but that such teaching is part of the necessary training of a statesman is an idea quite strange to us. A Roman received it as a matter of course. Of course, like other things at Rome, it made its way but slowly. Just before the middle of the second century b.c. the Senate resolved: ...
— Roman life in the days of Cicero • Alfred J[ohn] Church
... right," he thought. "There can't be any trick in all this. It's quite likely that Mortlake does want to play us a mean trick. I can't forget the look he flashed at me the day we took Lieut. Bradbury away from him in that meadow after we had made ...
— The Girl Aviators' Sky Cruise • Margaret Burnham
... ask no help of any human being. He told him that she had kept her word to the last; and that, meeting even him in the streets—he had been fond of her once, it seems—she had slipped from him by a trick, and he never saw her again, until, being in one of the frequent crowds at Tyburn, with some of his rough companions, he had been driven almost mad by seeing, in the criminal under another name, whose death he had come to witness, herself. Standing in the same place in which ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... steadily, and only a very moderate amount of sea running. Miss Stanhope regarded the occasion as propitious for the perfecting of herself in the art of steering; and she accordingly practised with great assiduity. Ned, of course, by virtue of his promotion, was no longer required to take his trick at the wheel—he was now the officer in command of the starboard watch—but Sibylla did not allow that circumstance to interfere in the least with her plans; on the contrary, she rather made it subservient ...
— The Missing Merchantman • Harry Collingwood
... came and stood next to Nigel; playing with his tie, a little trick which nearly drove him mad, but he was determined to hide it. When he couldn't bear it any longer he said: "That ...
— Bird of Paradise • Ada Leverson
... shade,—upon an object; never white light; that is the province of wisdom. We get beautiful effects from wit,—all the prismatic colors,—but never the object as it is in fair daylight. A pun, which is a kind if wit, is a different and much shallower trick in mental optics throwing the SHADOWS of two objects so that one overlies the other. Poetry uses the rainbow tints for special effects, but always keeps its essential object in the purest white light of truth.—Will you allow me to ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... up tolerably close. The animals, which are extremely shy, had, however, an idea that danger was about before he could get within a fair shot. As he knew that they would be off in another instant, he at once practised a trick which he had often ...
— Out on the Pampas - The Young Settlers • G. A. Henty
... suborning the tempests; but I rescued him, and notwithstanding all his mighty labours I brought him back again to Argos. I would remind you of this that you may learn to leave off being so deceitful, and discover how much you are likely to gain by the embraces out of which you have come here to trick me." ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... trick of verse which Emerson occasionally, not very often, indulges in. This is the crowding of a redundant syllable into a line. It is a liberty which is not to be abused by the poet. Shakespeare, the ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... abruptly in the middle of a speech which he was making to Mr. Billing. After a moment's hesitation he rushed to the door of the hotel. The sight of the people, standing bare-headed and silent while the band played, convinced him that Dr. O'Grady was in the act of perpetrating a treacherous trick upon the sincerely patriotic but unsuspecting inhabitants of Ballymoy. Standing at the door of the hotel he shouted and waved his arms. Mr. Billing stood behind him looking on with an expression of serious interest. Nobody could hear what Gallagher said. But Father McCormack ...
— General John Regan - 1913 • George A. Birmingham
... A wicked trick of Madame de Valentinois, sister-in-law of the Prince of Monaco, was the cause of O-Morphi's disgrace. That lady, who was well known in Paris, told her one day that, if she wished to make the king very merry, she had only to ask him how he treated his old wife. ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... to make them doubtful of the clearest thing in the world. Do not foolishly imagine that you have any compliment to pay yourself on this score; the most shining abilities, when used to deceive and mislead, to trick and cozen mankind, and to persuade them out of their lawful property, become the most dangerous possessions, and are as mischievous as plagues, pestilence, and famine. How can you dare to arrogate to yourself that part of philosophy which teaches you to look upon the luxuries of life with indifference, ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... lie there while you murdered that man with my weapon. Then you would creep away, and in the morning there was I and the dead man! I was to be the tool,—the girl there the lure. It was well worked out, Louis, but it was a coward's plan and a coward's trick!" ...
— The Lost Ambassador - The Search For The Missing Delora • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Judge Sewall's much-quoted diary. A traveller named Burnaby tells of a similar offence of an English sea-captain who was soundly whipped for kissing his wife on the street of a New England town on Sunday, and of his retaliation in kind, by a clever trick upon his chastisers; but Burnaby's narrative always seemed ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... was clearly proven by Miss Ashe," said Miss Duncan in her blunt fashion, coming at once to the point. "I recognize your claim to the authorship of the theme. The other young woman was the real plagiarist. It was a contemptible trick and not in keeping with ...
— Grace Harlowe's Second Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... to believe. Take that case of the reported victory in Poland in November 1914. There is strong reason to believe that a large part of Hindenburg's army narrowly escaped being encircled, that had Rennenkampf come up to time the trick would have been done. But it wasn't done. Yet nearly every correspondent in Petrograd sent the most confident news of an overwhelming victory. The Morning Post correspondent spoke of it as something "terrible but sublime. There has been nothing like it since Napoleon left ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... brain, I feel in justice to myself and Miss Macnaughtan that it is incumbent upon me to protest, in no measured terms, against what is not only an organised opposition and a pusillanimous display of superficial egotism, but a dirty trick. ...
— Terribly Intimate Portraits • Noel Coward
... Council of Ministers the preservation of peace would be almost impossible. In concert with Sebastiani, the Foreign Minister, he concealed the despatch from Laffitte. The Premier discovered the trick that had been played upon him, and tendered his resignation. It was gladly accepted by Louis Philippe. Laffitte quitted office, begging pardon of God and man for the part that he had taken in raising Louis Philippe to the throne. His ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... a long, thirsty gulp, watching the young man askance with his impressive eyes. Rainham noticed for the first time that he had a curious trick of smiling with his lips only—or was it of sneering?—while the upper part of his face and ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... sister; nay, in a comic and loathsome scene he forces her into the embraces of the craven Gunther; and then he gets killed by Brunhilt's machinations; when, after most unqueenly bickerings, the proud Amazon is brutally told by Siegfried's wife of the dirty trick which has given her to Gunther. After this, it is impossible to realize, when Siegfried is murdered and all our sympathies called on to his side, the utterly out-of-character, blackguardly behaviour which has brought the hero to his death. Similarly ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. II • Vernon Lee
... debt, Jen. I couldn't remain one of the Riders of the Plains and try to pay it. I left them. Then I tried to save Val, and I did. I knew how to do it without getting anyone else into trouble. It is well to know the trick of a lock and the hour that guard is changed. I had left, but I relieved guard that night just the same. It was a new man on watch. It's only a minute I had; for the regular relief watch was almost at my heels. I got Val out just in time. They discovered us, and we had a run for it. Pretty ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Ulic Ronayne. "There was a fatal healthiness about his appearance that disagreed with that idea. But he certainly was fond of this little place; he put up the fountain himself, had it brought all the way from Florence for the purpose; and he had a trick of lying here on his face and hands for hours together, grubbing for worms,—or studying the insect world I think he ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... had a tremendous sale at the time. It consisted of a medal with holes in it, and the puzzle was to work a ring with a gap in it from hole to hole until it was finally detached. As I was walking along the street I very soon acquired the trick of taking off the ring with one hand while holding the puzzle in my pocket. A friend to whom I showed the little feat set about accomplishing it himself, and when I met him some days afterwards he ...
— Amusements in Mathematics • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... reached him faint and broken, but they touched the keys of memory; and through and above them, Otto heard the ranting melody of the wood-merchants' song. Mere blackness seized upon his mind. Here he was coming home; the wife was dancing, the husband had been playing a trick upon a lackey; and meanwhile, all about them, they were a by-word to their subjects. Such a prince, such a husband, such a man, as this Otto had become! And he sped ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the coast of Africa than may be altogether pleasant. No wonder at that. Then the lad dreamed he heard the sailors plotting mutiny—that is not surprising; they are not attractive looking fellows. Then it is not unusual for a set of old salts to attempt to play off a trick on a young midshipman who holds himself somewhat a cut above the common run. No fear. All will come right at last; just do you keep the ship to the westward for the present, and then get into Table Bay as fast as you can. We shall have to put our noble skipper into ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... of sharp barks and growls awakened her with a start, and, for a second, still dazed by the drowsy invocation of the bumble-bee, she saw approaching her the gallant fellow who had been pierced through the heart by a Soudanese spear in eighteen eighty-five. He was dark and handsome, and, by a trick of coincidence, was dressed in loose knickerbocker suit, just as he was when he had walked up that very avenue to say his last good-bye. She remained for a moment tense, passively awaiting co-ordination of her ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... unfailingly. I cannot think that this is due in the least to the laborious interweaving of his books into a single scheme; I could believe that in general a book of Balzac's suffers, rather than gains, by the recurrence of the old names that he has used already elsewhere. It is an amusing trick, but exactly what is its object? I do not speak of the ordinary "sequel," where the fortunes of somebody are followed for another stage, and where the second part is simply the continuation of the first in a direct line. But what of the ...
— The Craft of Fiction • Percy Lubbock
... "An Indian trick," said he, shaking the drops of water from his face. "On a walk, food is a hindrance, a delay. But this tiny taste of bitter gum is a tonic; it spurs the courage and doubles the strength—if you are used to it. Otherwise I should not recommend you ...
— The Blue Flower, and Others • Henry van Dyke
... a bad thing for us, Redvig, when we played that little trick, for I have been ready to despair more than once, but the remedy is so simple that I wonder we have not thought ...
— Adrift on the Pacific • Edward S. Ellis
... know it! Who was it boiled the Easter eggs hard as agates, which you gave to my poor brother Recollets for the use of our convent? Tell me that, pray! All the salts and senna in Quebec have not sufficed to restore the digestion of my poor monks since you played that trick upon them down in your misnamed ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... 'No,' said he, 'it is not, but lift it up'; and, when I lifted up the thimble, the pellet, in truth, was not under it. 'It was under none of them,' said he, 'it was pressed by my little finger against my palm'; and then he showed me how he did the trick, and asked me if the game was not a funny one; and, on my answering in the affirmative, he said, 'I am glad you like it; come along and let us win ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... almost a scream of agony ... the candle, somehow, had served me a ghastly trick ... it had cast my shadow backward on the wall, like that shadow cast by the head of the dying poet, as Severn had sketched it.... I ran my hand over my face ... it was hollow and tight-drawn like the ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... worth about $40 apiece," said Holmes. "If I fail to find the originals I shall have to use the paste ones to carry the scheme through, but I hate to do it. It's so confoundly inartistic and as old a trick ...
— R. Holmes & Co. • John Kendrick Bangs
... laugh at him," said Joe; "no dog 'ud do anythink ef he wor laughed at. There now, that's better. I'll soon teach him a trick or two." ...
— The Children's Pilgrimage • L. T. Meade
... worse remains behind. Clive, to his great astonishment, found that Admiral Watson entertained different views from his about the honor of an English soldier and gentleman. However convenient it might be to bamboozle Omichund with a sham treaty, Admiral Watson declined to be a party to the trick by signing his name to the fraudulent document. Yet Admiral Watson's name was essential to the success of the Red Treaty, and Clive showed that he was not a man to stick at trifles. He wanted Admiral Watson's signature; he knew that Omichund would want Admiral Watson's signature; he satisfied ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... hard, rough, and stained with machine oil, and I used to wonder how any Prince Charming could overlook all that in any girl he came to. For all I had ever read of the Prince had to do with his "reverently kissing her lily-white hand," or doing some other fool trick with a hand as white as a snowflake. Well, when my Prince showed up he didn't lose much time in letting me know that "Barkis was willing," and I wrapped my hands in my old checked apron and took him up before he could catch his breath. Then there was no ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... life a complement of mine, with the missing element in it which I have been groping after through so many friendships that I have tired of, and through—Hush! Is the door fast? Talking loud is a bad trick in these curious boarding-houses. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... eyes he had! And that fascinating habit of flinging his hair back with a quick toss of the head. How gracefully he used his hands. And what lovely, distinguished table manners—she must practice that trick of lifting your napkin, delicately and swiftly, so as to barely touch your lips. She ate her own food in a kind of trance, unaware of what she was eating; yet it was like eating supper ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... eyes about him, and was pretty sure that all this was a device and trick of the waiting-maid, to put him off his inclination. He had seen her hiding and skipping about the two doors, and had observed that a very little whispering from her pacified the Salamander directly. "So," thinks Tom, "this is a plot ...
— The Lamplighter • Charles Dickens
... that trick of grunting so between his words and at the end of sentences. It was a fine, effective grunt that went well with his menacing utterance, with his heavy, bull-necked frame, his jerky, rolling gait; with his big, seamed face, his steady eyes, and sardonic mouth. ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... datos in the stronghold who came from that island of Bassila or Taquima; and that, if permission and pardon were given to them by the pari [i.e., Corcuera], one hundred and thirty of them would come down in the morning. We regard this as a trick of that Moro; and, although it may be as they say, we are taking precautions, and are watching for whatever may happen. It they should come, they will be well received; and that will not be a bad beginning to induce others to come from the hill. I shall advise your ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 28 of 55) • Various
... pale, then she told her sisters of the fatal trick that Hermann had played on them, and they too turned white as the chalk on the walls; well they knew their father and what his ...
— Fairy Tales from the German Forests • Margaret Arndt
... whom I have no very high opinion and from whom I do not want anything besides. But I was not popular. There was no disguising that, and in the gymnasium or the riding-hall other men would win applause for performing a feat of horsemanship or a difficult trick on the parallel bars, which same feat, when I repeated it immediately after them, and even a little better than they had done it, would be received in silence. I could not see the reason for this, and the fact itself hurt me much ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis
... much in the Sonnet to mark that development of French verse in which Du Bellay played so great a part. The inversion of the sentence, a trick which gives a special character to all the later formal drama is prominent: the convention of contrast, the purely classical allusion, are mixed with a spirit that is still spontaneous and even naif. But every word is chosen, and it is especially noteworthy to discover ...
— Avril - Being Essays on the Poetry of the French Renaissance • H. Belloc
... little letters dance across the page, Flaunt and retire, and trick the tired eyes; Sick of the strain, the glaring light, I rise Yawning and stretching, full of empty rage At the dull maunderings of a long dead sage, Fling up the windows, fling aside his lies; Choosing to breathe, ...
— Young Adventure - A Book of Poems • Stephen Vincent Benet
... stampeded the small ray of charity that had pierced the cluster of suspicions we had collected. The little Fijian performed the trick about seven o'clock in the evening, and it was done in a most effective manner. When we had made camp, Leith had sent Soma on ahead with the ostensible purpose of locating the easiest route to the base of the cliffs, and an hour afterward Kaipi managed ...
— The White Waterfall • James Francis Dwyer
... the Brethren were Utraquists under another name; and all that Augusta had to do was to give himself his proper name, and his dungeon door would fly open. Of all the devices to entrap Augusta, this well-meant trick was the most enticing. The argument was a shameless logical juggle. The Utraquists celebrated the communion in both kinds; the Brethren celebrated the communion in both kinds; therefore the Brethren were Utraquists.42 At first Augusta himself ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... makes me feel too old,' said Alvan. 'She talks. She listens, but I don't want to speak. Dead silence!—let it be a dash of the pen till you return. As for these good people hurrying to their traffic, and tourists and loungers, they have a trick for killing time without hurting him. I wish I had. I try to smother a minute, and up the old fellow jumps quivering all over and threatening me body and soul. They don't appear as if they had ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... circus trick!" interrupted Mr. Bunker. "I wouldn't try those, if I were you, Russ. You aren't hurt much this time, I guess, but you might be another time. Don't try any tricks until you ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Grandpa Ford's • Laura Lee Hope
... one's work. All occupations have a psychological aspect. They involve some trick of attention, of association, of memory. Certain things must be looked for, certain habits must be formed, certain movements must be automatized. Workmen should be helped to master these psychological problems, to ...
— The Science of Human Nature - A Psychology for Beginners • William Henry Pyle
... chap, in regard to sailing, who doesn't seem to have the 'feel' of the thing. There is a certain instinct of forces and balance that is either natural or acquired. Nat's is acquired. Why, I can remember just as well when I was eight years old my father used to let me take a short trick at the wheel in good weather, and I took to it naturally. Once on the Banks in a gale, when I was only eighteen, the men below said that my trick at the wheel was the only one ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... every eddy, every trick and twist of the tide; they know on any given day what boats are on the river, be they barges or liners; and they know the men ...
— Scotland Yard - The methods and organisation of the Metropolitan Police • George Dilnot
... He once played a trick upon the king. He requested the gift of a town, in order, as he explained, that he might there build a ladder by which they might both reach heaven. The king, in the rather credulous fashion of the ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... principles to temporal affairs. Here was a city of living men, each an individual personality, of individual tastes, thoughts, and passions, each a world to himself and monarch of that world. Yet by some abominable trick, it seemed, these individuals were not merely in external matters forced to conform to the Society which they helped to compose, but interiorly too; they actually had been tyrannized over in their consciences and judgments, and loved their chains. If he had known ...
— Dawn of All • Robert Hugh Benson
... record. You went sick When orders looked unwholesome: then, with trick And lie, you wangled home. And here you are, Still talking big and boozing in ...
— The War Poems of Siegfried Sassoon • Siegfried Sassoon
... said the doctor, "didn't you say that another fellow left the University with you? He played you a scurvy trick or something—didn't you say?" ...
— Under the Rebel's Reign • Charles Neufeld
... a fair, open, and avowed bankruptcy, is always the measure which is both least dishonourable to the debtor, and least hurtful to the creditor. The honour of a state is surely very poorly provided for, when, in order to cover the disgrace of a real bankruptcy, it has recourse to a juggling trick of this kind, so easily seen through, and at the ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... oysters which have fallen to the lot of the armador. During this operation, that dignitary has to watch the Busos with the greatest scrutiny, to prevent them from swallowing the pearls with the oysters, a trick which they perform with so much dexterity as to almost defy detection, and by means of which they often manage to secrete the most ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... hastily. He heard with astonishment, and then said: "There is some foul trick here. Have you the message?" She handed it to him. "It is the surgeon's writing, verily," he said; "but it is still a trick, for the sick man here is Rozel. I see it all. You and I forbidden to meet—it was a trick to ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... with them, to be with them. He left us alone continually. During the whole of that four years he never once spoke in anger to me nor challenged my fidelity. My relationship to him was difficult. We were, quite simply as men, the worst-suited in the world. He had not a trick nor a habit that did not get on my nerves; he was intelligent only in those things that I despised a man for knowing. This would have been well enough had he not persisted in talking about matters of art and literature, of which, of course, he knew nothing. He did it, I believe, ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole |
