"Trickster" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a friend, who pretended to quickwittedness and understanding; so he came up to him privily and said to him, 'Let me do, so I may put the change on this trickster, for I know him to be a liar and thou art near upon having to pay the money; but I will turn suspicion from thee and say to him, "The deposit is with me and thou erredst in imagining that it was with other than myself," and so divert him from thee.' 'Do so,' replied the merchant, 'and rid ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne
... called, began preparations for the expedition that was to make both Egypt and himself rich beyond computation. Then followed a conversation with Haji Wali, whom age—he was 77—"had only made a little fatter and a little greedier," and the specious old trickster promised to accompany the expedition. As usual Burton began with a preliminary canter, visiting Moilah, Aynunah Bay, Makna and Jebel Hassani, where he sketched, made plans, and collected metalliferous specimens. He returned to Egypt with native stories of ruined towns evidencing a formerly ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... the road, change faces, peep Betwixt the legs and mock the daily round. Yet thou canst more than mock: sometimes my tears At midnight break through bounden lids — a sign Thou hast a heart: and oft thy little leaven Of dream-taught wisdom works me bettered years. In one night witch, saint, trickster, fool divine, I think thou'rt Jester at the ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... is one devised by nature for the trickster. His success does not depend altogether on human gullibility; part of his argument rests on the conditions which surround the industry of mining, one which never can be free of extreme risk. All men know that gold is found far away, where living is high and means of transportation ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... habit and quite as amendable to cultivation as falsehood. Deceit may meet with temporary success, but he who avails himself of it can be sure that in the end his "sin will find him out." The credit of the truthful, reliable man stands when the cash of a trickster might be doubted. "His word is as good as his bond," is one of the highest compliments that can be ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon
... home and fetch them?" said the King, "I should be very glad to see if you are such a trickster as folks say." ...
— East O' the Sun and West O' the Moon • Gudrun Thorne-Thomsen
... than the gangsmen, and provided none of them succeeded in slipping away in the darkness, or made a successful resistance, in half-an-hour's time or less the whole party would be safe under lock and key, cursing luck for a scurvy trickster in delivering ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... Hugo, after accepting the dedication of the Lost Illusions to himself, had induced Edouard Thierry to write an abusive article against him. "He is a great writer," said the novelist in telling this, "but he is a mean trickster." ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... trickster and a humorist and sets the will of the species beyond the discernment of the individual. The picador has to blindfold his horse in order to get him into the bull-ring, and likewise Dan Cupid exploits the myopic ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... diabolical scheme, reads like an adventure from the "Arabian Nights." The personification of the Queen by a little dressmaker who happened to resemble her, the forgery of the Royal signature, the final attainment of the diamonds, all seemed so easy to this consummate trickster that it is small wonder she became intoxicated with success and blind to consequences. No sooner was the necklace in her possession than, of course, as fast as possible it was turned, not into money, but into money's worth. Houses and lands, equipages and furniture, costly apparel, and delicacies ...
— East of Paris - Sketches in the Gatinais, Bourbonnais, and Champagne • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... man playing for potential stakes as big as those Enright was gaming for, would intrust no cunning moves to a mere Broadway chorus-girl. No, Enright was on the ground in person because the matter in prospect needed a director, an excessively shrewd trickster, and the others were with him to do his bidding. If Cavendish really lived, all their plans depended on his being kept out of sight, disposed of, at least until they had the ...
— The Strange Case of Cavendish • Randall Parrish
... he swung and bellowed in the tree-tops. "Take me for guide to-day," he seemed to plead. "Other holidays you have tramped it in the track of the stolid, unswerving sun; a belated truant, you have dragged a weary foot homeward with only a pale, expressionless moon for company. To-day why not I, the trickster, the hypocrite? I, who whip round corners and bluster, relapse and evade, then rally and pursue! I can lead you the best and rarest dance of any; for I am the strong capricious one, the lord of misrule, and I alone am irresponsible and ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame
... ills. Many a man, and woman, too, has been put to death for saying less;—and the exile of my son to remember—yes; all that! He was Republican—I a Legitimist; I of the old, he of the new. Republics are good in theory; France might have given it a longer trial but for this trickster politician, who is called Emperor—by ...
— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan
... man. You are continually saying to him, "All I require of you is for your own good, but you cannot understand it yet. What does it matter to me whether you do what I require or not? You are doing it entirely for your own sake." With such fine speeches you are paving the way for some kind of trickster or fool,—some visionary babbler or charlatan,—who will entrap him or persuade him to adopt ...
— Emile - or, Concerning Education; Extracts • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... but that, at all events, he certainly will not have one. Such an answer will give him confidence in you; he will conceive an opinion of your veracity, of which opinion you may afterward make very honest and fair advantages. But if, in negotiations, you are looked upon as a liar and a trickster, no confidence will be placed in you, nothing will be communicated to you, and you will be in the situation of a man who has been burned in the cheek; and who, from that mark, cannot afterward get an honest livelihood if he would, but must continue ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... with the aid of which he proceeded to examine into the question. In the stillness of the night he made a business of patrolling that portion of the principal Government edifice, and, sure enough, the footsteps followed along behind him. He cornered them; it was surely some trickster! There was no possibility for the joker to get away. But, a moment later, the steps were heard in another part of the hall; they had evaded him successfully. Similar experiments were tried on other nights, but they all ended in ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... the Secretary of the Treasury, at once took up the gauntlet thrown down by his rival. He not only regarded the President with contempt, but he extended it to the political trickster who dared to assume the airs of ...
— The Southerner - A Romance of the Real Lincoln • Thomas Dixon
... "I know no King of France. He would not dare to beard me in my own home like this. This man, this mock ambassador, this Comte de la Seine, is the only one with whom we have to do—an impostor who shall meet with the trickster's fate." ...
— The King's Esquires - The Jewel of France • George Manville Fenn
... nature's chiaroscuro—if it means the perception that blackness and sublimity are not synonymous, and that space and light may possibly be coadjutors—then no man, who ever advocated or dreamed of such a principle, is anything more than a novice, blunderer and trickster in chiaroscuro. And my firm belief is, that though color is inveighed against by all artists, as the great Circe of art—the great transformer of mind into sensuality—no fondness for it, no study of it, is half so great a peril and stumbling-block to the young student, ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... effect of alarming Hasting, who quickly determined to save himself from peril by joining his old countrymen and becoming again a viking chief. He thereupon sold his countship to Tetbold, and hastened to join the army of Norsemen then besieging Paris. As for the cunning trickster, he settled down into his cheaply bought countship, and became the founder of the subsequent house of ...
— Historical Tales, Vol 5 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality, German • Charles Morris
... mark the trickster's cunning when he feigns To fear my vengeance, whom his taunts revile! Nay, Drances, be at ease; this hand disdains To take the forfeit of a soul so vile. Keep it, fit inmate of that breast of guile, And now, good Sire, if, beaten, we despair, If never Fate on Latin arms shall smile, And ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... practised in abuse, and have long learned to call mathematicians and astronomers cheats and charlatans. They freely used their vocabulary for the benefit of De Morgan, whom they denounced as a scurrilous scribbler, a defamatory, dishonest, abusive, ungentlemanly, and libellous trickster. ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... kind of fairylike inspiration, unique and charming—the style, for example, of Jimbo. Then, on a lower plane, there is the frankly bogie creepiness of John Silence. Between the two he has created a position for himself, half trickster, half wizard, that none else in modern literature could fill. His new book, Incredible Adventures (MACMILLAN), is a combination of both methods. Four of the five adventures are of the mystically gruesome kind, removed however from being commonplace ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 2, 1914 • Various
... were fated to remain eternally unknown to him,—not that they were difficult to fathom, but simply because he lacked the good faith and candor by which great souls and scoundrels look within and judge themselves. A man of genius or a trickster says to himself, "I did wrong." Self-interest and native talent are the only infallible and lucid guides. Now the Abbe Birotteau, whose goodness amounted to stupidity, whose knowledge was only, as it were, plastered on him ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... Rhone and Garonne on the other. Of all the conjurers of his day he was the most famous and the most successful, always, of course, excepting that Corsican conjurer who ruled for so many years the destinies of France. From those who have seen that famous trickster, we have learned that the Charleses, the Alexanders, even the Robert Houdins, were children compared with the magical wonder-worker of the past generation. The fame of Comus was enormous, and his gains proportionate; and when he had shuffled off this mortal coil it was found he had ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 7 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 12, 1850 • Various
... also of a pretty sunny tone. Then there was nothing else, nothing but Fagerolles' picture—an actress in front of her looking-glass painting her face. He had not mentioned it at first; but he now spoke of it with indignant laughter. What a trickster that Fagerolles was! Now that he had missed his prize he was no longer afraid to exhibit—he threw the School overboard; but you should have seen how skilfully he managed it, what compromises he effected, painting in a style which ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... in my opinion, no legal right whatever, yet she will make a hard fight, and with that trickster Hobson to help her with his chicanery, it is liable to take some time ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... sultry to-night by some passion we know nothing of, he looked like a bloated spider coming out of the cell where his victims were. "Gorging himself, while they and the country suffer the loss," he muttered. But Paul was a hot-brained young man. We should only have seen a vulgar, commonplace trickster in politics, such as the people make pets of. "Such men as Schuyler Gurney get the fattest offices. God send us a monarchy soon!" he hissed under his breath, as the gate closed after the politician. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... should then worship that crucified sophist and live according to his laws. Therefore they despise all things and hold everything in common, having received such ideas from others, without any sufficient basis for their faith. If, then, any impostor or trickster who knows how to manage things came among them, he soon grew rich, imposing on these ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... double-dyed in gall of bitterness, Trickster and sinner against gods, by giving The stolen fire to perishable men! Attend—the Sire supreme doth bid thee tell What is the wedlock which thou vauntest now, Whereby he falleth from supremacy? Speak forth the whole, make all thine utterance ...
— Suppliant Maidens and Other Plays • AEschylus
... 1787, Sheridan brought forward the third charge, relating to the treatment of the begams of Oudh in a speech held by all who heard it to be a marvellous display of oratory. He described Hastings as "by turns a Dionysius and a Scapin," a tyrant and a trickster, with a mind in which "all was shuffling, ambiguous, dark, insidious, and little".[210] Indeed throughout the proceedings against Hastings his accusers constantly disregarded moderation and even decency of language. The third charge and other articles having been accepted ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... companions? And whose fault was it that he had sent away Philostratus, the best of them all? Hers—the faithless traitoress, from whom he had looked for peace and joy, who had declared that she felt herself bound to him, the trickster in whom he had believed he saw Roxana—But she was no more. On the table by his bed, among his own jewels, lay the golden serpent he had given her—he fancied he could see it in the dark—and she had worn it even in death. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... for lies are his coin. Steal from a thief, for that is easy. Set a trap for a trickster, and catch him at the first attempt. But beware of the man who has no axe ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... he be and a cunning trickster who surpassed thee in wiles, though it were a god who challenged thee. We know craft enough, both of us, for thou art by far the best of mortals in speech and counsel and I among the gods am famed for devices ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb
... There was Trickster, a merchant of physical leanness, Distinguished alike for his means and his meanness; And Sharper, a lawyer, with manners as courtly, And practice as large, as his person was portly. There was Aderman Michaels, the head of his faction, Who had ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... herself. He even went farther in cynicism than she had ever gone, behaving like a convert to a religion which had the charm of novelty. He praised her for her capacities as a liar, a hypocrite, a subtle trickster, a thrower of dust in the eyes of her world. One of his favorite names for her was "dust-thrower." Sometimes he abused her. She believed that at moments he detested her. But he clung to her and he did not mean to give her ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... the Master," he returned quietly. "Do you take me for a fool, Mackellar? Understand it once and for all, I treat this beast in my own way; fear nor favour shall not move me; and before I am hoodwinked, it will require a trickster less transparent than yourself. I ask service, loyal service; not that you should make and mar behind my back, and steal my ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... philosopher teaches doctrines that become doubtful in their ultraness, the weakness carries the insincerity,—the effort becomes stagnant. Never sell yourself to any class of evils for popularity's sake. If you attempt it you mistake the end, and sell yourself to the obscurity of a political trickster, flatttered by a few, believed ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... deliberate clash, an effect of burlesque; but of course the clash must not be too brutal. Certain characters of the heroic saga are, so to speak, at home with Satyrs and others are not. To take our extant specimens of Satyr-plays, for instance: in the Cyclops we have Odysseus, the heroic trickster; in the fragmentary Ichneutae of Sophocles we have the Nymph Cyllene, hiding the baby Hermes from the chorus by the most barefaced and pleasant lying; later no doubt there was an entrance of the infant thief himself. Autolycus, Sisyphus, Thersites are all Satyr-play ...
— Alcestis • Euripides
... superfluous accuracy, but, on the contrary, from too conscientious a wish to escape the mistakes which language not rigorous is apt to occasion. So far from seeking to "pettifogulize"—i.e., to find evasions for any purpose in a trickster's minute tortuosities of construction—exactly in the opposite direction, from mere excess of sincerity, most unwillingly I found, in almost every body's words, an unintentional opening left for double interpretations. Undesigned equivocation prevails every where; [10] ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... Braxton—no longer the suave and polished trickster, but pale as chalk and trembling like a leaf. "This is assault and battery, and ...
— Baseball Joe Around the World - Pitching on a Grand Tour • Lester Chadwick
... a sudden resolution, partly angry, partly frightened, and partly humorous, to become absolutely frank, and to tell the whole truth about himself for the first time not only to his dupe, but to himself. He excuses himself for the earlier stages of the trickster's life by a survey of the border-land between truth and fiction, not by any means a piece of sophistry or cynicism, but a perfectly fair statement of an ethical difficulty which does exist. There are some people who ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton
... truth is borne upon Bruennhilde: It was not he, despite all appearances, who took the ring from her, and if not he—"Ha!" she cries, in a burst of furious indignation, "This is the man who tore the ring from me; Siegfried, trickster and thief!" ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... respect and order on the part of the indigent, and of care and protection on the part of the wealthy. The sense of pecuniary insecurity is there little felt, and the ignorant poor are not left to the machinations of any trickster whose interest it may be to deceive them. It is for this reason that even in societies where the oppression of the poor and weak is, in other ways, infinitely greater than in this country, riots and seditions are difficult to create. It is because of the social providence ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... been added the cacodorous scents of forty or fifty different brands of talcum and rice powder. It begins to grow warm in the church, and a number of women open their vanity bags and duck down for stealthy dabs at their noses. Others, more reverent, suffer the agony of augmenting shines. One, a trickster, has concealed powder in her pocket handkerchief, and applies it dexterously while ...
— A Book of Burlesques • H. L. Mencken
... during the last speech subdued the most violent emotion). What do I hear, archbishop? Can it be? Oh, tell me, by what signs and marks of proof This bold-faced trickster doth uphold himself As Ivan's son, whom we bewailed ...
— Demetrius - A Play • Frederich Schiller
... the trickster in other ways; one of which was to write the names of mortals instead of spirits. It made no difference, however, as to getting ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... Not the God of Israel. Wonderful God! Blessed assurance, that "the God of Jacob is our refuge,"—the God who saves the man without character, irrespective of character,—makes of him,—Israel. Jacob, the supplanter, the trickster, the weak character, the warped character, the sinner, God takes, and through trials, tests, develops him and makes of him Israel,—a prince of God. That is God's plan ...
— God's Plan with Men • T. T. (Thomas Theodore) Martin
... eccentric, could be depended upon for outright dealing in general; still Phyllis had a pretty substantial belief that in politics success lay largely on the side of the trickster. For many years the Colonel had been in the Legislature. No man had been able to beat him for the nomination. She had often heard him tell how he laid out his antagonists by taking excellent and popular short turns on them, and it was plain to her mind now that ...
— Southern Lights and Shadows • Edited by William Dean Howells & Henry Mills Alden
... shall bear my part of it with honesty. I have no virtues—where should I have got them from, forsooth, in a life like mine? I mean I have no women's virtues; but I have one that is sometimes—not always—a man's. 'Tis that I am not a coward and a trickster, and keep my word when 'tis given. You fear that I shall lead my lord a bitter life of it. 'Twill not be so. He shall live smoothly, and not suffer from me. What he has paid for he shall honestly have. I will not cheat him as weaker women do their ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... dreamer," Charles the Bold, was brought into immediate rivalry with that royal trickster, the "universal spider," Louis XI. Charles was by far the nobler spirit of the two: his vigour and intelligence, his industry and wish to raise all around him to a higher cultivation, his wise reforms at home, and attempts to render ...
— Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois, Complete • Marguerite de Valois, Queen of Navarre
... other birds. "We will have no such fellow for our king. Cheat and trickster he is, and he shall be punished. You shall be king, brave Eagle, for without your strength he could never have flown so high. It is you whom we want for our protector and lawmaker, not this sly fellow no bigger than ...
— The Curious Book of Birds • Abbie Farwell Brown
... being, as her villainous countenance proved, one of the criminal class. The newspaper fell upon the floor, after apparently going through the figure, and there was a vacuum where it had been. I was not much shaken, however, although my theory of a human trickster dressed like ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 4, April, 1891 • Various
... in his soul. Of all injured vanities, that of the reproved buffoon is the most savage; and when grave issues are involved, these petty stabs become unbearable. But Gondremark was a man of iron; he showed nothing; he did not even, like the common trickster, retreat because he had presumed, but held to his point bravely. 'Madam,' he said, 'if, as you say, he prove exacting, we must take the ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and foreseeing his designs. Thus she hath been observed to act in the case of a rattlesnake, which never meditates a human prey without giving warning of his approach. This observation will, I am convinced, hold most true, if applied to the most venomous individuals of human insects. A tyrant, a trickster, and a bully, generally wear the marks of their several dispositions in their countenances; so do the vixen, the shrew, the scold, and all other females of the like kind. But, perhaps, nature hath never afforded a stronger example of all this than in the ...
— Journal of A Voyage to Lisbon • Henry Fielding
... Fate is an abominable trickster; loves to tease us. With one hand it gave Miss Porter a delectable male; with the other prevented her enjoying him. Furthermore, it prematurely deprived her of a ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... not see; nor was he very resentful, and his grin was rather of mockery than of anger. He was troubled by no lofty notions of honour that should cause him to see in this deed of Gonzaga's anything more than such a trickster's act as it is always agreeable to foil. And then, to the others, who knew naught of what was passing in Cappoccio's mind, he did a mighty strange thing. From being the one to instigate them to treachery ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini
... at his wits' end. Well might he be! Apart from the injury done to his family and belongings, his house was thronged night and day by inquisitive visitors from all sections of the country. He was denounced on the one hand as a trickster, and on the other as a man who must be guilty of some terrible secret sin, else he would not thus be vexed. Sermons were preached with him as the text. Factions were formed, angrily affirming and denying ...
— Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters • H. Addington Bruce
... definite decision, as far as my own belief was concerned, as to whether or not the spirits of the dead could communicate with the living. At one time I would be led to believe they could, but then the exposure of some well-known medium as a trickster would change my opinion and I would again find myself puzzling vainly over the answer to ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco
... seemed that I have done a mean thing for selfish purposes is it your place to judge me? Listen, I tell you. I have known for a year and a half that Wayne Shandon murdered his brother and robbed the dead body. I have seen, although all men know this fact as well as I do, that he has been trickster enough to cover his bloody tracks; that it would be hard to convict him in court. I have seen that it lay within my power, that it has become my duty, to punish him in another way. Not a thing have I done that is not just, that the law courts will not sanction. And yet, when ...
— The Short Cut • Jackson Gregory
... that they meant me to pay the score, which I accordingly did, though I at once suspected the fairness of the game. I mean to say, if my opponent had been a trickster he could easily have rearranged his fingers to defeat me before displaying them. I do not say it was done in this instance. I am merely pointing out that it left open a way to trickery. I mean to say, one would wish to be assured ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... him applauded on the stage. And so skillfully did he know how to exhibit the resources of his brain, that he was generally taken for an educated man, while in reality he possessed only cleverness and the brazenness of a Warsaw loafer and trickster. Moreover, for Janina he was the first and only man to whom she had ever surrendered herself. It seemed to her that this bound them ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont
... through blue glasses, and they gave to her a dark, mysterious tone that he could not fathom. There were too many things to explain; too many things which seemed to connect her directly with the Rodaines; too many things which appeared to show that her sympathies were there and that she might only be a trickster in their hands, a trickster to trap him! Even the episode of the lawyer could be turned to this account. Had not another lawyer played the friendship racket, in an effort to buy the ...
— The Cross-Cut • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... into the texture of his autobiography, so he does men who appear not once but a dozen times. Take Jasper Petulengro out of the books and he does not amount to much. In them he is a figure of most masculine beauty, a king, a trickster, and thief, but simple, good with his fists, loving life, manly sport and fair play. He and Borrow meet and shake hands as "brothers" when they are little boys. They meet again, by chance, as big boys, and Jasper says: "Your blood beat when mine ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... is * * * *. The trickster, I observe, has carefully reduced the pounds of cotton to cwts., in the hopes of concealing a great fraud to which he has condescended; taking, in the Whig year of 1841, the home consumption of cotton, whilst in Peel's year he gives entire importation ...
— Lord George Bentinck - A Political Biography • Benjamin Disraeli
... that is likely to be sold so low as not to cover the sum loaned upon it, they have the right, until the expiration of a certain time, to bid it in; that is, to offer more and keep the property in their own hands. If this trickster can't be hoodwinked as to the sale being a bona fide one until the time when his right to buy it expires, some other scheme must be resorted to. Now, is this business strictly legal? Am I justified in doing it for the benefit of a family I seek to enter? That ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... be the last to go. And there are things enough for you to do. If you ally yourself with the good causes that cry for support and leadership, you can be far more formidable than you have ever been as a skulking trickster; you can lead men up as you ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... ability and acquirement. While in every other profession quackery and pretension may gain for men wealth and honor, forensic renown can be won only by rare natural powers aided by profound learning and varied experience in trying causes. The trickster and the charlatan, who in medicine and even in the pulpit find it easy to dupe their fellow-men, find at the bar that all attempts to make shallowness pass for depth, impudence for wit, and fatal for wisdom, are instantly ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 6 • Various
... do something decisive, or that exalted personage who desired to avoid all scandal not connected with himself would be irretrievably offended, and he, Guglielmi, would never sit on the judicial bench. Yet, unscrupulous as he was, the trickster shuddered at the thought of what that lie ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot
... to the stone-couch by leaps and bounds. But while intent upon removing the stuff from Pao-y's face, she simultaneously ejaculated: "Master Tertius, are you still such a trickster! I'll tell you what, you'll never turn to any good account! Yet dame Chao should ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... telescope finder. "Disconnect that projector! It's Miko down there! This Haljan is a trickster! Where is he? Braile—Braile, you accursed fool! Are Haljan and the ...
— Brigands of the Moon • Ray Cummings
... of a LAURIE can imagine—may, in this cold weather, venture an immersion in the Thames or Serpentine, making the plunge with a declaratory scream, the better to extract practical compassion from the pockets of a morbidly humane society; we can believe this, Sir PETER, and feel no more for the trickster than if our heart were made of the best contract saddle-leather; but we confess a cut-throat staggers us; we fear, with all our caution, we should be converted to a belief in misery by a gash near the windpipe. Sir ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... many proofs of innate inferiority: for they are full of pretentiousness and affectation; they teem with examples of all manner of vices, from false English to an immoral delight in dukes; they prove their maker a trickster and a charlatan in every page. To them, however, whose first care is for rare work, the series of novels that began with Vivian Grey and ended with Endymion is one of the pleasant facts in modern letters. These books abound ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... masters time, it conquers space, It cows that boastful trickster Chance, And bids the tyrant Circumstance Uncrown and fill ...
— Custer, and Other Poems. • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... blissful realm above, Where the poor and the rich meet in meekness and love: Where the works of each heart are unveiled to the light, And Humbug and Cant yield to Truth and to Right— Where the trickster lays off his mask of deceit, And the cloak of the hypocrite drops to his feet, And Honor is given, where Honor is due— We may see that some from the Fifth Avenue, Most nobly will speak in that great reckoning day, While their earthly detractors ...
— Nothing to Say - A Slight Slap at Mobocratic Snobbery, Which Has 'Nothing - to Do' with 'Nothing to Wear' • QK Philander Doesticks
... O thou child of a Trachinian sire, Henceforth will take good care, from far away To look on Troy and Atreus' children twain. Yea, where the trickster lords it o'er the just, And goodness languishes and rascals rule, —Such courses I will nevermore endure. But rock-bound Scyros henceforth shall suffice To yield me full contentment in my home. Now, ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... skilful navigator, for I want no further recommendation. The way in which he, an old experienced hand, one who would be able to see at a glance how thoroughly I should be at his mercy if he were a trickster whose aim was to make as much money out of the transaction as he could, proved that he was as honest as the day and ready to lay himself open to every examination, that alone without his display of honest indignation when he suspected me of being ...
— The Ocean Cat's Paw - The Story of a Strange Cruise • George Manville Fenn
... but water to-day," said his brother. "I swear it—so help me, God! I know what I'm about. And I know you. I know you for the vilest cheat and trickster that ever walked the earth. I've been in hospital—I don't know how long. I know that you would cheat me if you could. You were to pay me within six months—and ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... dangerous ground. Nature is a trickster, and she spread her net and caught the Highland maid and the Lowland laddie, and bound them with green withes as is her wont. So they were married by the Congregational "meenister," and for a wedding-tour fared forth Westward to fame and fortune. "Out West" then meant York State, and ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... that you can look at the question," retorted Farley promptly. "What we did for you, Darrin, is no more than we'd stand ready to do for any man in the brigade who was being ground down and out by a mean trickster." ...
— Dave Darrin's First Year at Annapolis • H. Irving Hancock
... a trickster, good nurse; thou didst play upon me foully. Good, good nurse! Come, go quickly. Thou shalt see no more love-making; I forbid thee; kiss thy nestling and go. I will watch over her. Come, my sweet, come!" His Grace took the maid in his strong arms, and though his legs ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... as 'gamester', 'youngster', 'oldster', 'drugster' (South), 'huckster', 'hackster', (swordsman, Milton, prose), 'teamster', 'throwster', 'rhymester', 'punster' (Spectator), 'tapster', 'whipster' (Shakespeare), 'trickster'. Either, like 'teamster', and 'punster', the words first came into being, when the true significance of this form was altogether lost{174}; or like 'tapster', which was female in Chaucer ("the gay tapstere"), as it is still in Dutch and Frisian, and distinguished ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... was J. Edward O'Sullivan Addicks, votary of rotten finance, perpetual candidate for the United States Senate, wholesale debaucher of American citizenship and all-round corrupter of men—J. Edward O'Sullivan Addicks, a corporation political trickster, who has done more to hold up American laws, American elective franchises, and American corporations to the scorn of the civilized world than any other man of this or ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... trickster," said L'Estrange to the Austrian prince. "The revenge of a farce on the ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... usurpers; but it is the peculiarity of Mr. Johnson that the indignation excited by his claims is only equalled by the contempt excited by his character. He is despised even by those he benefits, and his nominal supporters feel ashamed of the trickster and apostate, while condescending to reap the advantages of his faithlessness. No party in the South or in the North thinks of selecting him as its candidate, for the vices and weaknesses which make an excellent accomplice and tool are not those which any party ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... capital volume might be written, that should contain no better story than the one which is told of Ned Thurlow's discomfiture in 1788, when he was playing a trickster's game with his friends and foes. Windsor Castle just then contained three distinct centres of public interest—the mad king in the hands of his keepers; on the one side of the impotent monarch the Prince of Wales waiting impatiently ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... truth. Josiah Crabtree, you are a trickster of the first water, but if I can prevent your trickery I am going to do it." Tom turned to Mrs. Stanhope, who was now crying violently. "Won't you go below and let me have it out ...
— The Rover Boys on the Great Lakes • Arthur M. Winfield
... share of the crime and consequent misery which devastate the world. The clerk who spends more than he earns, is fast qualifying himself for a gambler and a thief; the trader or mechanic who overruns his income, is very certain to become in time a trickster and a cheat. Wherever you see a man spending faster than he earns, there look out for villainy to be developed, though it be the farthest thing possible from his ...
— Golden Steps to Respectability, Usefulness and Happiness • John Mather Austin
... not ill, like the Tinker If a trickster had foundered his muck-sled; For he loves not rough travelling, the losel, And loath would he be of this uproar. I flinch not,—nay, hear it, ye fearless Who flee not when arrows are raining,— Though the steeds of the ocean be storm-bound And ...
— The Life and Death of Cormac the Skald • Unknown
... manner. He remained motionless and Hollis had an opportunity to study him carefully and thoroughly. His conclusions were brief and comprehensive. They were expressed tersely to himself as he waited for Dunlavey to speak: "A trickster ...
— The Coming of the Law • Charles Alden Seltzer
... the statesman and trickster, forsooth, Should have for a crisis no other recourse, Beneath the fair day-spring of light and of truth, Than the old brutum ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... Theatre; if your Business be to compose a Sermon, or you are engag'd in Theological Studies, resort to Child's Coffee-House in St. Paul's Church-Yard; if you are desirous to depaint the Cheat and the Trickster, I recommend ye to the Royal-Exchange and the Court End of the Town; and if you would write a Poem in imitation of Rochester, you need only go to the Hundreds of Drury, and you'll be ...
— A Vindication of the Press • Daniel Defoe
... follows another in a perfectly natural way; yet there are many questions in the reader's mind as to how the little rascal will turn out, and whether he will accomplish his mission. Much more cleverness is shown by the sleight-of-hand trickster, who, unassisted and in the open, with no accessories, dupes his staring assembly, than by him who, on the stage, with the aid of mirrors, lights, machines, and a crowd of assistants, manages to deceive your eyes. A story that by its frank simplicity takes the ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... which every teacher would gain by knowing. In the Hindu animal legends the Jackal seems to play the role assigned in Germanic lore to Reynard the Fox, and to "Bre'r Rabbit" in the negro stories of Southern America; he is the clever and humorous trickster who usually comes out of an encounter with a whole skin, and turns the laugh on his enemy, ...
— Stories to Tell Children - Fifty-Four Stories With Some Suggestions For Telling • Sara Cone Bryant
... hundreds of enemies, and I, only I, know her and can defend her—weak, base shallow trickster, traitress that she is!' cried Alvan, and came down in a thundershower upon her: 'Yesterday—the day before—when? just now, here, in this room; gave herself—and now!' He bent, and immediately straightening his back, addressed Colonel von Tresten ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Amerindian tribes had met with their kind, there had been a hunter of the open country, a smaller cousin of the wolf, whose natural abilities had made an undeniable impression on the human mind. He was in countless Indian legends as the Shaper or the Trickster, sometimes friend, sometimes enemy. Godling for some tribes, father of all evil for others. In the wealth of tales the coyote, above all other animals, had ...
— The Defiant Agents • Andre Alice Norton
... to humble himself before the fox and say, "Haply, thou canst do somewhat to deliver me from destruction." Replied the fox, "O thou wolf, thou witless, deluded, deceitful trickster! hope not for deliverance, for this is but the just reward of thy foul dealing and its due retaliation." Then he laughed with chops wide open and repeated these ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... into our own house of call to beard us!" he exclaimed between his profanities. "I should like to know who uses the 'Three-decker,' when the crew of the Fair Maid are here, without our licence? What is the matter with you, Trickster Tim? Are you afraid ...
— Athelstane Ford • Allen Upward
... considered the unapproachable nature of the place and waxed contented of heart and his mind became right of rede, because he was certified of his daughter that she was safe from the tricks of Time and every trickster.[FN505] So he tarried beside her for a decade of days, after which he farewelled her and wended him home, leaving the damsel in the mountain-cave. Thus fared it with these; but as regards the case of the Prince of Al-Irak, ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... Vasari proves, also, that the Gossipy One stood well with the reigning powers, otherwise Benvenuto would not have thought to condemn his work and allude to the man as a dough-face, trickster, lickspittle, slanderer, vulture, vagrom, villain, vilifier and gnat's hind-foot. Cellini threatened to kill the man several times: he denounced him in public and used to call after him on the street, referring to him cheerfully as a deep-dyed rogue. Had either of these men killed ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... Pope? Why was a slow-minded closet-student like Halleck permitted to fritter away in the long-drawn-out operations against Corinth the advantage of position and of force that had been secured by the army of the West? Why was a political trickster like Butler, with no army experience, or a well-meaning politician like Banks with still less capacity for the management of troops, permitted to retain responsibilities in the field, making blunders that involved waste of life and of resources and the loss ...
— Abraham Lincoln • George Haven Putnam
... dare risk the defeat of its entire ticket by nominating a candidate against the Hon. Perfidius Ruse. (Immense enthusiasm.) Indeed, Mr. Spiggott had reason to believe that Boss O'Meagher, cunning trickster that he was, would seek to avail himself of Mr Ruse's popularity and would indorse the nominee of this meeting. Under these circumstances it was folly to think of permitting Mr. Ruse to retire. (Cheers.) It could not ...
— Tin-Types Taken in the Streets of New York • Lemuel Ely Quigg
... Petrokoff in an angry tone, and then he blew his nose loudly. "Velasco—bosh! He is only a trickster! There is a fad nowadays among the ladies to run after him." He bowed to the three ladies in turn mockingly, "My friends here tried to get tickets last week in St. Petersburg, but the house was sold out. Bosh—I tell you! I wouldn't cross the street ...
— The Black Cross • Olive M. Briggs
... filled him with astonishment at the magnitude of his achievements. The accomplished adventurer was always ready to regard himself rather as a sublime being endowed with great and stupendous attributes, than as a pitiful trickster. He became the God of his own idolatry, and stood astonished, as the witch of Endor in the English Bible is represented to have done, at the success ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... Fernhurst's sons. And as Gordon looked his last at his old foe, he felt that "the Bull" was so essentially big, so strong, so noble of heart, that it hardly mattered what he worshipped. There hung round him no false trapping of the trickster; sincerity was the keynote of his life. Gordon would search in vain, perhaps, for a brighter lodestar. As two vessels that have journeyed a little way together down a river, on taking their different courses at the ocean mouth, signal one another "good ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... that sooner than allow 'is innocent patrons to be swindled by a six-fingered thimblerigging son of a confidence trickster 'e'd start ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, April 14, 1920 • Various
... qualities; with nothing great but his crimes; and even those contrasted by the littleness of his motives, which at once denoted both his baseness and his meanness, and marked him for a traitor and a trickster. Nay, in his style and writing there was the same mixture of vicious contrarieties;— the most grovelling ideas were conveyed in the most inflated language, giving mock consequence to low cavils, and uttering quibbles in heroics; so that his compositions ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... was still so governed by an imp of boyish perversity and presumption, that he renounced the ambition of being the first statesman of Athens in order to show himself its most restless, impudent and unscrupulous trickster; and, subjecting all public objects to the freaks of his own vanity and selfishness, ever ready to resent opposition to his whim with treason against the state, he stands in history a curious spectacle of transcendent gifts belittled by profligacy of character, the falsest, keenest, most mischievous, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... muttered. "I shall have to wait four or five dreary hours before my lady comes home from her morning calls—her pretty visits of ceremony or friendliness. Good Heaven! what an actress this woman is. What an arch trickster—what an all-accomplished deceiver. But she shall play her pretty comedy no longer under my uncle's roof. I have diplomatized long enough. She has refused to accept an indirect warning. ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... labors, but your permission to return to Florence.' Hearing all this, the bishop, although heartily vexed, could not restrain his laughter; and the rather, as he remembered that he who was thus tricked by an ape, was himself the most incorrigible trickster in the world. However, when they had talked and laughed over this new occurrence to their hearts' content, the bishop persuaded Buonamico to remain; and the painter agreed to set himself to work for the third time, when ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... often associated with the doctrine of the playfulness of God. This idea—so strange to Europe[433]—may have its roots partly in the odd non-moral attributes of some early deities. Thus the Rudra of the Satarudriya hymn is a queer character and a trickster. But it soon takes a philosophical tinge and is used to explain the creation and working of the universe which is regarded not as an example of capricious, ironical, inscrutable action, but rather as manifesting easy, joyous movement and the exuberant rhythm of a dance ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... had He to be glad of The clash of the war-glaive— Traitor and trickster And spurner of treaties— He nor had Anlaf, With armies so broken, A reason for bragging That they had the better In perils of battle On places of slaughter— The struggle of standards, The rush of the javelins, The crash of the charges, The wielding of weapons— The play that they played with ...
— Anglo-Saxon Literature • John Earle
... into him, and made such a fool of him as insensibly to persuade him to waive, in his exceptional case, that general law of distrust systematically applied to the race. He revolves, but cannot comprehend, the operation, still less the operator. Was the man a trickster, it must be more for the love than the lucre. Two or three dirty dollars the motive to so many nice wiles? And yet how full of mean needs his seeming. Before his mental vision the person of that threadbare Talleyrand, that impoverished Machiavelli, ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... full of black clouds. I wanted to die. Then I wanted to get away. When I found a ship they took me for a half-drunk sailor, and hustled me into the forecastle in lively shape. When Curran found me and hauled me out of the bunk, I had been asleep enjoying the awfullest dreams. I took him for a trickster, who wanted to get me ashore and jail me. I feel better. I think ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... "Ah! you loveable little trickster!" he exclaimed as Harriet Payne entered. "Come and let me thank you. Gold and trinkets ...
— The Brown Mask • Percy J. Brebner
... trickster! We'll hand you over to the authorities. Since you knew how to bring them back to life, maybe it was you who ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... the staff, fell unnoticed among the wrangling of pedants and partisans. Brunswick, himself a man of great intelligence though of little resolution, saw the true quality of the men who surrounded him. "Ruechel," he cried, "is a tin trumpet, Moellendorf a dotard, Kalkreuth a cunning trickster. The generals of division are a set of stupid journeymen. Are these the people with whom one can make war on Napoleon? No. The best service that I could render to the King would be to persuade him to keep the peace." [132] It was ultimately decided, after two days ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... like Uist is the very height of folly. And yet it is precisely in such bare and rough regions where man has to fight with nature as with a constant foe, that the unseen powers are believed to be most terrible. The lutin of the smiling land of France is a mere capering trickster, and the "lubber fiend" of Milton's poem is pictured as an unpaid adjunct of the dairy. Duncan's "wee man up on the hill-side" is a permanent and unspeakable horror of the night. "What is ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... Bible does not remember the pathetic picture of Esau falling on Jacob's neck and weeping, in a paroxysm of brotherly love and forgiveness? But the rabbis daub it over with their pious puerilities. They solemnly inform us that Esau was a trickster, as though Jacob's qualities were catching? and that he tried to bite his brother's neck, but God turned it into marble, and he only broke his teeth. Esau wept for the pain in his grinders. But why did Jacob weep? This looks like a poser, yet later rabbis surmounted the difficulty. ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... better than that. Can you imagine the great doctor the dupe of a mere trickster? The professor was a man of great science and was blessed with an almighty sound head. But he ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... heart to shoot him. He gave chase nevertheless, plunging along in a ziz-zag way over a carpet of moss and dry pine-needles, and through some dense tangles of undergrowth, uttering a welcoming screech whenever he saw the bright eyes of the little trickster peering down ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook
... explained, and Prince Marvel rushed from the hall to find the treacherous Red Rogue. But that clever trickster had hidden himself in an upper room, and for ...
— The Enchanted Island of Yew • L. Frank Baum
... said the trickster, slowly, passing his hand over his brow; "why, what's the matter ...
— A Master Of Craft • W. W. Jacobs
... Forewarned I am forearmed. (Aside) Thou fluent trickster! Fit head of such a State! I would to Heaven ...
— Gycia - A Tragedy in Five Acts • Lewis Morris
... season it will carve the frank, open face into wrinkles; how like a knife it will stab the honest heart. And then its transformations,—how it has been known to change a goodly face into a mask of brass; how with the evil custom of debt has the true man become a callous trickster! A freedom from debt, and what nourishing sweetness may be found in cold water; what toothsomeness in a dry crust; what ambrosial nourishment in a hard egg! Be sure of it, he who dines out of debt, though his meal be a biscuit and an onion, dines in 'The Apollo.' And then, for raiment, what warmth ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... would have paid their money with your brain as sole guarantee? You! Get along; I am the only one to make bargains like that, and you are the only one with whom I make them. Go, Marechal, give him his money; I won't gainsay it. But you are a trickster, as usual!" ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... of Damalali (short-tailed weasel) and Pewetseli (long-tailed weasel). These heroes are responsible for many of the natural features of the region so references to this myth are rather frequent. The Coyote, in the form of a rather malevolent and stupid trickster, and the Wolf, a generally patriarchal and protective figure, appear in several myths, as do cannibalistic giants and a giant ...
— Washo Religion • James F. Downs
... basis of right and truth and in a bad cause, is to assume the terrible responsibility that must fall on the champion of error. Jesus scorned not to use suggestion so that he might move men to their benefit, but every vicious trickster has adopted the same means to reach base ends. Therefore honest men will examine well into their motives and into the truth of their cause, before seeking to influence men ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... simple secrets of chemistry; that he should pretend to prophetic gifts which in his heart he knew to be fraud, and should be recreant to his ancestral faith, proved him to deserve the penetrating sentence which Paul passed on him. He was a trickster, and knew that he was: his inspiration came from an evil source; he had come to hate ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... by the absence of any witness to our negotiation, I may as well profit by the absence of any witness to our interview. You are a cheat and a trickster, Mr. Goodge, and I have the honour to wish you good afternoon!" "Go forth, young man!" cried the infuriated Jonah whose fat round face became beet-root colour with rage, and who involuntarily extended his hand to the poker—for ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... hear us say: 'Gart is a bad man; Gart is a good-for-nothing, a city trickster?' No, we said: 'This thing has never happened ...
— The Crushed Flower and Other Stories • Leonid Andreyev
... saw light so intensely that he never for an instant thought of painting it. He knew that to paint the sun was as impossible as to stop it; and he was no trickster, trying to find out ways of seeming to do what he did not. I can paint a rose,—yes; and I will. I can't paint a red-hot coal; and I won't try to, nor seem to. This was just as natural and certain a process of thinking with him, ...
— Mornings in Florence • John Ruskin
... cunning which has marked his career. The whole affair was an adroit specimen of political hypocrisy, by which the actual favourite of the majority was not only sold, but was induced to nominate the trickster who had defeated him."[1188] ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... machine—for the safety of the community, for the majesty of the law. He demanded instant conviction for this trickster, this Fagin among men, this hoary-headed old scoundrel who had insulted the intelligence of twelve of the most upright men he had ever seen in a jury-box, insulted them with a tale that even a child would laugh at. When at last he folded his wings, hunched ...
— The Underdog • F. Hopkinson Smith
... ill-regulated interest in the phases of life and human character. The fact is (at least) that we spent hours together daily, and that I was nearly as much on the forward deck as in the saloon. Yet all the while I could never forget he was a shabby trickster, embarked that very moment in a dirty enterprise. I used to tell myself at first that our acquaintance was a stroke of art, and that I was somehow fortifying Carthew. I told myself, I say; but I was no such ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... was on the alert instantly. What was at the bottom of it all? Perhaps the man was not dead. Perhaps this was just a little trick of Druro's to slip the toils he felt closing round his liberty—her toils! Being a trickster herself, she easily suspected trickery in others. Rapidly she turned the thing over in her mind. She had no intention of involving herself with a man who had got to pay the penalty for committing a crime—but nothing simpler for her than to repudiate him if anything so unpleasant ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... becoming more persistent in his fraud in proportion as the aggression is repeated; he abandons his trickery when he deems it futile. But hitherto we have subjected him only to a friendly examination-in-chief. The time has come to put a string of searching questions and to trick the trickster if there be ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... blowing around him. In this manner did Time blow on the man—Time, that merciless jester, who had always circled about playing various pranks on him; but Kranitski had never looked into the face of that jester, with attention. Occasionally, sorrow and grief had come to him in company with the trickster, but they were transient, not of the kind which go into the depth of the heart, but such as slip along over the surface. He grew gloomy; was sorry for having lost someone, or having missed something, and passed on with springy, lightly swaying gait, with ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
... steps, muttering harsh language at some unknown trickster. As he climbed back into his machine and made ready to start, two men seemed to rise before him, as ...
— The Exploits of Elaine • Arthur B. Reeve |
