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Toy   Listen
noun
Toy  n.  
1.
A plaything for children; a bawble.
2.
A thing for amusement, but of no real value; an article of trade of little value; a trifle. "They exchange for knives, glasses, and such toys, great abundance of gold and pearl."
3.
A wild fancy; an odd conceit; idle sport; folly; trifling opinion. "To fly about playing their wanton toys." "What if a toy take 'em in the heels now, and they all run away." "Nor light and idle toys my lines may vainly swell."
4.
Amorous dalliance; play; sport; pastime. "To dally thus with death is no fit toy."
5.
An old story; a silly tale.
6.
A headdress of linen or woolen, that hangs down over the shoulders, worn by old women of the lower classes; called also toy mutch. (Scot.) "Having, moreover, put on her clean toy, rokelay, and scarlet plaid."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Toy" Quotes from Famous Books



... what I played until I got to be about 10 years old. I was a terrible little fellow to imitate things. Old man Tommy Angel built mills, and I built myself a little toy mill down on the branch that led to Sugar Fork River. There was plenty of nice soapstone there that was so soft you could cut it with a pocket knife and could dress it off with a plane for a nice smooth finish. ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration

... of those great coffee plantations of Brazil, where all is done by machinery that possibly can be, Santos-Dumont early developed a passion for mechanics. In childhood he made toy airplanes. He confesses that his favourite author was Jules Verne, that literary idol of boyhood, who while writing books as wildly imaginative as any dime tale of redskins, or nickel novel of the doings of "Nick Carter" had none the less the ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot

... Parrott. Young Parrott had never shown the desire to do anything, except play polo; while he might,—at least he had the passion for other things. The family, he thought, took his music very lightly, as a kind of elegant toy that should be put aside at the first call of real duty. Perhaps he had given them reason by his slow preparation, his waiting on the fulness of time and his own development to produce results for the world to see. Isabelle alone ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)

... inquisitive man as much as the inquisition. He suspects all questions for examinations, and thinks you would pick something out of him, and avoids you. His breast is like a gentlewoman's closet, which locks up every toy or trifle, or some bragging mountebank that makes every stinking thing a secret. He delivers you common matters with great conjuration of silence, and whispers you in the ear acts of parliament. You ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle

... great consultation held in Pansy's room, and this was what the children decided; sixpence should be spent on a pair of ducks to float in a basin of water attracted by a magnet, a toy which they had seen in a shop window with the price marked in plain figures. And sixpence should be spent, for Pansy's own special pleasure, in a flower growing in a pot, such as they had often ...
— The Thirteen Little Black Pigs - and Other Stories • Mrs. (Mary Louisa) Molesworth

... avoines,[2] or wild rice; while the squaws added to their quota of merchandise a contribution in the form of moccasins, hunting-pouches, mococks, or little boxes of birch-bark embroidered with porcupine-quills and filled with maple-sugar, mats of a neat and durable fabric, and toy-models of Indian cradles, snow-shoes, ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie

... human being might; and Lady Merrifield owned with a sigh that she must accept as a fact that what even the heathens owned as a Divine mystery and awful attribute, had come to be treated as a commonplace business messenger and scientific toy, though (as Mrs. Gatty puts it) the mystery had only gone deeper. So much for the peril; and for the other scruple, it was set at rest by a hospitable letter from Mrs. Underwood, heartily inviting Miss Agatha Prescott, as ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... didn't know much about picking a lock. He had got his money by a higher form of burglary that did not require a knowledge of lock picking. Nor as a boy had he been one to play at mechanics. He had let other boys make the toy fluttermills and the wooden traps and the like, and then he had traded for them. He was sorry now that he hadn't given more heed to the mechanical side of things when he ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb

... will; but when the internal sub-soiling is broken up, the heart swells with a steady and tremendous pressure till the breast feels like bursting; the lips are dumb, or open only to speak upon indifferent themes. Flowers may be played with, but one never yet cared to toy ...
— What Answer? • Anna E. Dickinson

... the Hall straightway and sought Dallach, and found him at the Gate. Iron-face had given him a new sword, a good one, and had bidden him call it Thicket-clearer, and he would not leave it any moment of the day or night, but would lay it under his pillow at night as a child does with a new toy; and now he was leaning against a buttress and drawing the said sword half out of the scabbard and poring over its blade, which was indeed fair enough, being wrought with dark grey waving lines like the eddies of the ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris

... imitation battle-fields, any one of which is larger than the field of Waterloo, the men are instructed in the gentle art of bombing, first with "dubs," which do not explode at all, then with toy-grenades which go off harmlessly with a noise like a small firecracker, and finally, when they have become sufficiently expert, with the real Mills bomb, which scatters destruction in a burst of noise and flame. To attain accuracy and distance in throwing these destructive little ovals ...
— Italy at War and the Allies in the West • E. Alexander Powell

... self-assertive. The rustle of squirrels along the pine-stems, the monotonous music of the cuckoo, varied by a charge of toy pistol-shots when an inexperienced monkey alighted on a dead twig. Brutus, standing squarely between them, eyed each in turn with critical speculation, his ugly head cocked very much to one side. He instinctively mistrusted all wearers of petticoats, and had found the ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver

... name is Wilbert?" inquired Mr. Congdon. "Well, now, Wilbert, I want you to let me take this toy of yours home with me. I have come after Clarence. We leave this evening for Boston. Trust me with it, and ...
— Harper's Young People, October 26, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... money. Something pathetic in a man chasing his own father over the country; doesn't gee with our old ideal of the patriarchal system with father at the head of the table serving the whole family from one miserable duck. Ever notice a queer streak of eccentricity in people who toy with the chessmen? Of course you're thinking I'm no exception to the rule, but the thought isn't displeasing to me. That was a neat move—you're waking up, Archie! Well, sir, young Congdon was offering something handsome to any one who'd ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson

... crowded round him, and I used to creep towards him, and think, May be it is my book that my uncle has got in his pocket. But, no; nothing ever came out for me. Yet the first sight of a plaything, even if it is not one's own, is always a cheerful thing, and a new toy would put them in a good humour for a while, and they would say, "Here, Emily, look what I have got. You may take it in your own hand and look at it." But the pleasure of examining it, was sure to be stopped in a short time by the old story of "Give that to me again; you know that ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb

... of toy," replied Mrs Vallance, for she had never been to the north of England and had ...
— A Pair of Clogs • Amy Walton

... scarcely recognized, for the strange expression there. "Miss Johnson, if I knew that George deliberately planned my ruin under the guise of a mock marriage, and then when it suited him deserted me as a toy of which he was tired, I should ...
— Bad Hugh • Mary Jane Holmes

... ever should. Men in general don't seem to care so long as they have lodgings that suit them—I mean unmarried men. But I always wanted to live alone—without strangers, that is to say. I told you that I am not very sociable. When I got my house, I was like a child with a toy; I couldn't sleep for satisfaction. I used to walk all over it, day after day, before it was furnished. There was something that delighted me in the sound of my footsteps on the staircases and the bare floors. Here I shall live and die, I kept saying to myself. Not ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing

... by which each of the young Amzis bestowed a box of neckties of approximately the same value upon their uncle. Little Susan gave him a muffler; the sisters had joined in a new easy chair which Jeremiah now carried in; their husbands had combined in their usual tribute of cigars. A toy and a five-dollar gold-piece for each child; the little chamois-skin bags of gold-pieces for the sisters; a book for each brother-in-law, completed Amzi's offerings. He announced to the children that he was going ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson

... aside his horn and sat hugging his knees and looking at the wonderful view spread out before them. Across the valley the Rigi lifted its crest to the sky. Little toy villages, each with its white spire, lay sleeping silently in the sunshine. On the shores of the lake far below he could see the city of Lucerne. It might have been a painted city, for not a sound reached them from its busy ...
— The Swiss Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins

... this. I despise you!' he said. 'You would have nothing to do with a noble Prince; you did not understand the rose or the nightingale, but you could kiss the Swineherd for the sake of a toy. This is what you get for it!' And he went into his kingdom and shut the door in her face, and she had to stay ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Various

... only this once, unless they keep their word," he said, producing his gifts—a book or toy for each of his own children, and a package of sweetmeats which he divided ...
— Elsie's children • Martha Finley

... writings upon the style of his successors, and upon the literary development of his country, cannot easily be over-estimated. With him French prose may be said to have attained its manhood; the best of his contemporaries, and of those who had preceded him, did but use as a staff or as a toy that which he employed as a burning sword." History of French Literature (New ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird

... each with his hand on his breast, and both sat down on stools in the middle of the chamber. Hiram pushed aside his toga somewhat in order to show the great gold medal on his breast; in answer to this Dagon began to toy with a large gold chain which he had received ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus

... Rameses! my tall mass Not the ages could destroy. But it fell cut down like grass. Paris took it for a toy. ...
— Enamels and Cameos and other Poems • Theophile Gautier

... a blade of bracken to pieces. The girl had been wearing a broad flat cap of velvet, which in the coolness of the twilight she had removed and now swung gently to and fro in her hand as she looked to the north, where small as a toy and backed by the orange glow of sunset, the Castle of Edinburgh could be seen black upon its wind-swept ridge. The girl was ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett

... say he is! I wish he belonged to me." The black eyes grew very wistful and the brown face unusually sober as she examined this new toy, this live toy that could really play with its little mistress and understand, at least in a measure, ...
— Tabitha at Ivy Hall • Ruth Alberta Brown

... the West something showed up against the blue of the sky—something that might have been a bird, a toy kite, or an aeroplane ...
— A Man of Means • P. G. Wodehouse and C. H. Bovill

... like it?" asked the boy proudly, as the nose of the impertinent-looking little runabout stopped short within about two inches of the back of the big car. "Dad said he was afraid I would smash the jumbo, so he bought this little toy for me. Some class, ...
— Nan Sherwood at Palm Beach - Or Strange Adventures Among The Orange Groves • Annie Roe Carr

... the point!" snapped Johnny. "How can I make money with this plane?" He gave it a disgruntled look, and turned to Bland. "She's a bird of a millionaire's toy, if you ask me," he said. "She's a fiend for gas and oil, and every time you turn 'er around there's some darned thing to be fixed or replaced. I'm about broke, trying to keep her up till I can sell out. It's coffee and sinkers for you, old timer, if you're going to eat on ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower

... it is quite true that we must fight the Jesuits somehow; and if we can't do it with one weapon we must with another. But mere defiance is a feeble weapon and evasion a cumbersome one. As for petitioning, that is a child's toy." ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich

... words—for the most part on the subject of reforms and how to effect them. One of the documents prepared at that time contained grandiloquent passages that were a portent of coming events—though I was ignorant of the fact. In writing about my project I said, "Whether I am a tool of God or a toy of the devil, time alone will tell; but there will be no misunderstanding Time's answer if I succeed in doing one-tenth of the good things I hope to accomplish.... Anything which is feasible in this philanthropic age can easily be put into practice.... A listener gets the impression that ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers

... OFF FUNCHAL, JUNE 29. - Here we are off Madeira at seven o'clock in the morning. Thomson has been sounding with his special toy ever since half-past three (1087 fathoms of water). I have been watching the day break, and long jagged islands start into being out of the dull night. We are still some miles from land; but the sea is calmer than Loch Eil often was, and the big HOOPER rests very ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson

... acknowledge the truth of the matter. An elderly clergyman was his guest, and the four-year-old daughter of the house was entertaining the "grandpa" with a toy puzzle, which he fumbled with in vain, unable to put it together or to take it apart. Impatient at last, the little girl hastily snatched it from his hand with a childish growl of contempt, and proceeded to show him the trick, saying, with an airy mingling of criticism and ...
— Etiquette • Agnes H. Morton

... fenced off from a pretty flower-garden. Goats browsed in the doorway, and a cow was within half-a-dozen feet of keeping company with the clerk. Maitre Voigt's room was a bright and varnished little room, with panelled walls, like a toy- chamber. According to the seasons of the year, roses, sunflowers, hollyhocks, peeped in at the windows. Maitre Voigt's bees hummed through the office all the summer, in at this window and out at that, taking it ...
— No Thoroughfare • Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins

... bleeding their venison and drinking it instead of eating it. At last, however, in the comfortable post-prandial hours, they take up the drained morsel, chew it, rechew it and reduce it to a shapeless ball. It is a dessert for the teeth to toy with. The Labyrinth Spider knows nothing of the diversions of the table; she flings the drained remnants out of her web, without chewing them. Although it lasts long, the meal is eaten in perfect safety. From the first bite, the Locust becomes a lifeless ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre

... one set of apartments, and they were empty of people, but the fire, the books on the table, and the child's toy cast on the hearthrug showed it was deserted only for a minute. Sister Ursula drew breath on the balcony, and then hurried upwards. There was iron rust red on both her hands, the front of her gown was speckled with it, and a ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, June 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... work of Hippocrates, see Baas, p. 201. For the necessary passage of medicine in its early stages under priestly control, see Cabanis, The Revolution of Medical Science, London, 1806, chap. ii. On Jewish ideas regarding demons, and their relation to sickness, see Toy, Judaism and Christianity, Boston, 1891, pp. 168 et seq. For avoidance of dissections of human subjects even by Galen and his disciples, see Maurice Albert, Les Medecins Grecs a Rome, Paris, 1894, chap. xi. For Herophilus, ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White

... I remember it," I exclaimed, pressing passionately the delicate hand which offered the glasses for my inspection. They formed a complex and magnificent toy, richly chased and filigreed, and gleaming with jewels, which, even in the deficient light, I could not help perceiving ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... on towards the town till he came to a small terrace of shops, when he went into the first, which was a stationer's and toy-dealer's, with a stock in trade of cheap wooden toys and incomprehensible games, drawing slates, penny packets of stationery and cards of pen and pencil-holders, and a particularly stuffy atmosphere; the proprietor, a short man with a fat white face ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey

... beings must love something, and, in the dearth of worthier objects of affection, I contrived to find a pleasure in loving and cherishing a faded graven image, shabby as a miniature scarecrow. It puzzles me now to remember with what absurd sincerity I doated on this little toy, half fancying it alive and capable of sensation. I could not sleep unless it was folded in my night-gown; and when it lay there safe and warm, I was comparatively happy, believing it to be ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte

... a toy wagon, sold it for six dollars, managed to gather four dollars more, invested the ten dollars in lottery tickets, and drew only blanks, of which experience he said many years later, "I consider it one of the best investments of my life; for I then learned that it was ...
— Peter Cooper - The Riverside Biographical Series, Number 4 • Rossiter W. Raymond

... family would have been enough in other circumstances to lead the doctor, if not to put her personality out of his head, to change the character of his interest in her. Instead of treasuring her image as a rarity, he would at most have played with it as a toy. He was that kind of a man. But situated here he could not go so far as amative cruelty. He dismissed all reverential thought about her, but he could not ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy

... of his music in the money sense before, but as his love and ambition for the two women grew upon him, he was like a child with a new toy. He would not only make a great name, he would make an immense fortune: his mind blinked, dazzled at the very thought. He moved with a new pride, ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Various

... call for help if he needed it, and put that possibility out of his mind. "Naw, this ain't no gunboat—the Government don't steal men; it enlists 'em. But it's a funny pile of junk, all the same. Where in blazes is that toy gun? Well, I'll be hanged!" and he plunged toward the "Cotton" box he had burst in his descent, and worked ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford

... Claude. She did not hate her for that. Charmian had only got in the way of a whim. But Mrs. Shiffney disliked those who got in the way of her whims, and resented their conduct, as the spoilt child resents the sudden removal of a toy. Without hating Charmian she dearly wished for the failure of the great enterprise, in which she knew Charmian's whole heart and soul were involved. And she wished it the more on account of the change in Claude Heath. In his intensity, ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens

... difficult to see why property has become such a powerful instrument in civilization. Anything which a person really owns, in a psychological sense, is a home for his soul. Really owning an object, a toy, a garment, a watch or a home, means infusing one's personality into it. A man who possesses significant things has a new body through which his soul can work; this body trains his powers; and it should give him life more abundantly. A landless ...
— Woman in Modern Society • Earl Barnes

... his watch—the prettiest little toy in gold and enamel, with elaborate monogram and coat of arms—a watch that looked like a woman's gift. They had been nearly three hours on ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon

... strange, and this toy sets me thinking of one woman in particular: that woman who sued, supplicated for my help, and then, when she had all my interest—Confound the doll; here is the incident, just ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick

... not a cheering employ, for he had to make a playful noise. At last, with infinite craft, he devised an arrangement whereby the table could be supported as to three legs on toy bricks, leaving the fourth clear to bring down on the floor. He could work the table with one hand and hold a book with the other. This he did till an evil day when Aunty Rosa pounced upon him unawares and told him that ...
— Kipling Stories and Poems Every Child Should Know, Book II • Rudyard Kipling

... Tree" he transplanted to England a living bush that can still blossom into candles. And in his tale of "The Tin Soldier" he uttered the true defence of romantic militarism against the prigs who would forbid it even as a toy for the nursery. He suggested, in the true tradition of the folk-tales, that the dignity of the fighter is not in his largeness but rather in his smallness, in his stiff loyalty and heroic helplessness in the hands of larger and lower ...
— The Crimes of England • G.K. Chesterton

... convention. Her pledge through Mr. Mix of twenty-five thousand dollars. How could she ever offer an excuse that would hold water? And how could she tell the truth? And to think of Mr. Mix's place in the community when it was shown—as inevitably it would be shown—that he had acted merely as a toy balloon, inflated by Mirabelle's ...
— Rope • Holworthy Hall

... regret the disuse of that custom, because it put an end to one way of distinguishing those who had, from those who had not, been used to good society. To wear the sword easily was an art which, like swimming and skating, required to be learned in youth. Children could practise it early with their toy swords adapted to ...
— Memoir of Jane Austen • James Edward Austen-Leigh

... distant as ever. But he did not care now. It had been a glorious climb, and the distance he had already covered was a considerable one. He looked back. The town looked like a model of a town, with little toy houses and different-colored roofs among the trees that made a darker patch on the pattern of the valley floor. The mountains on the other side of the valley seemed like blue clouds stretching out ...
— David and the Phoenix • Edward Ormondroyd

... with a registered pedigree calls to mind a little experience that I had last year. A fellow came into the office here with a shriveled-up toy spaniel, one of those curly, hairy little fellows that a woman will kiss, and then grumble because a fellow's mustache tickles. Said he wanted to sell him. I wasn't really disposed to add a dog to my troubles, but on general principles I asked him ...
— Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer

... I thus softly to my selfe, What strange thing haue we here, I neuer saw the like thought I: Tis more then strange to me, To haue a child haue wings to fly, And yet want eyes to see; Sure this is some deuised toy, Or it transform'd hath bin, For such a thing, halfe Bird, halfe Boy, 180 I thinke was neuer seene; And in my Boat I turnd about, And wistly viewd the Lad, And cleerely saw his eyes were out, Though Bow and Shafts he had. As ...
— Minor Poems of Michael Drayton • Michael Drayton

... your mother took That poor gift which Margaret laid aside: Flower, or toy, or trinket, matters not: What it was had better be forgot . . . It was just then ...
— Legends and Lyrics: Second Series • Adelaide Anne Procter

... light upon some toy You have desire to purchase; and your store, I think, is not for idle ...
— Twelfth Night; or, What You Will • William Shakespeare [Hudson edition]

... the Times, is famous for 'lacquered shams;' and any one who has sojourned for a while in the huge, smoky toy-shop will add—for not a few genuine realities! To walk from factory to factory, from workshop to workshop, and view the extraordinary mechanical contrivances, the ingenious adaptations of means to ends, to say nothing ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 461 - Volume 18, New Series, October 30, 1852 • Various

... traffic, and their vessel load. Their stores complete, and ready now to weigh, A spy was sent their summons to convey: An artist to my father's palace came, With gold and amber chains, elaborate frame: Each female eye the glittering links employ; They turn, review, and cheapen every toy. He took the occasion, as they stood intent, Gave her the sign, and to his vessel went. She straight pursued, and seized my willing arm; I follow'd, smiling, innocent of harm. Three golden goblets in the porch she found (The guests not enter'd, but the table crown'd); ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope

... "We'll do toy-making this term," she decreed, "and then next term we can think of something else. In the spring and summer we'll have a Posy Union to send bunches of flowers to sick people. We can't do anything of that, of course, during the winter, unless some of you like to put ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil

... two little orphan children lived all the time with Sally Migrundy. And each morning when they tumbled, laughing and shouting, out of their little snow white beds, they found underneath a new present. So each morning they had a new toy to play with, for the magic beds knew just what a child would ...
— Friendly Fairies • Johnny Gruelle

... "don't you think something we could pack in the trunk would be nicer? It needn't be a large gift, you know. Just something they can say came from New York. We'll go up to the toy department ...
— Sunny Boy in the Big City • Ramy Allison White

... up abruptly and flung away his cheroot with force. It made a darting red trail like a toy rocket fired through the ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad

... all," said Glanville, with a faint smile, "we are all, in the words of the true old proverb, 'children of a larger growth.'Our first toy is love—our second, display, according as our ambition prompts us to exert it. Some place it in horses—some in honours, some in feasts, and some—voici un exemple—in furniture. So true it is, Pelham, that our earliest longings are the purest: ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... McCormick began to make his famous reaper in a gristmill. The first model dry dock was made in an attic. Clark, the founder of Clark University of Worcester, Mass., began his great fortune by making toy wagons in a horse shed. Farquhar made umbrellas in his sitting-room, with his daughter's help, until he sold enough to hire a loft. Edison began his experiments in a baggage car on the Grand Trunk Railroad ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden

... our going seemed very much as though we were sailing a big toy-boat in an illimitable porcelain bathtub. There were no rocks to look out for, no shoals in what was really one vast shoal, and all was smooth as milk. All the afternoon, till the sun set and the stars came out and we dropped our anchor in a luminous nothingness, a ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne

... the smoke from the funnels of a hundred hostile vessels of war, all converging upon the helpless, undefended Golden Gate. And not all undefended, for out through the Golden Gate moved the Energon, a tiny toy of white, rolling like a straw in the stiff sea on the bar where a strong ebb-tide ran in the teeth of the summer sea-breeze. But the Japanese were cautious. Their thirty- and forty-thousand-ton battleships slowed down half ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London

... you think that Jack had better settle down with poor dear Guss? She's here, and upon my word I think she's nearly broken-hearted. Of course you and I know what Jack has been thinking of lately. But when a child cries for the top brick of the chimney, it is better to let him have some possible toy. You know what top brick he has been crying for. But I'm sure you like him, and so do I, and I think we might do something for him. Mr. Jones would let them a nice little house a few miles from here at a peppercorn rent; and I suppose old ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope

... and hate every woman you go near, yes, even my cousin who has been so good to me, and whom I love. I will take the risk and come with you, believing you to be an honest gentleman, who would not deceive a girl who trusts him; and if you do, may God deal with you as I shall, for I am no toy to be broken and thrown away, as you would find out. Yes, I will take the risk because you have made me love you so that I cannot ...
— Fair Margaret • H. Rider Haggard

... moment the party was extremely hilarious. Its members had ransacked the toy-shops of the fair, and every man was carrying some plaything and making the most of it, and extolling its greater virtues than the playthings of his fellows. Taranne carried a pea-shooter, and peppered his companion's legs persistently, grinning with delight if any of his victims showed irritation. ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy

... walked down by the side of this wall towards a little arbor at the bottom of the garden. Just as she reached the arbor, she was startled by a squeak from the top of the wall, and something fell just at her feet. Taking the thing up, she perceived that it was a toy cat with a mewing arrangement underneath. It had been carefully wrapped up, but the paper was broken in the attempt to make it mew at the top of the wall. The lady burst into an uncontrollable fit of laughter; but, in answer to her laugh, came a dismal mewing from the ...
— Who Spoke Next • Eliza Lee Follen

... face. Motor-'buses were roaring through the long, empty streets, carrying loads of labourers from the docks to their northern homes, or work-girls from the northern factories to their homes in the Island. The little, softly lighted toy and sweetstuff shops gleamed upon us out of the greyness, and the tins of hot saveloys and baked apples, which the hawkers were offering, smelt appetizing. From tiny stalls outside the sweetstuff shops you may still purchase ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke

... With precious patinas, a various round Of milky opal, or turkis, or emerald, Glistered with rubies faint and smoky pearls, Where swirls of incised pattern have enthralled Figures of sweet archaic gods and girls, And I shall say: "Thou art a curious toy, O soul that mirrored ...
— The Hours of Fiammetta - A Sonnet Sequence • Rachel Annand Taylor

... fascination, then an incorrigible triweekly habit. There was no alternative left me now but to live there. The charm of that wild bay and its lost village had gotten under my skin. And thus it happened that I deserted my farm and friends at Bar la Rose, and with my goods and chattels boarded the toy train one spring morning, bound for my abandoned house, away from sufficient-unto-itself Bar la Rose and its pigheaded inhabitants, the butcher, the blacksmith, ...
— A Village of Vagabonds • F. Berkeley Smith

... seemed an incongruous trio,—fig-tree, orange-tree, and savin. In truth, the cedars of Florida were one of my liveliest surprises. At first I refused to believe that they were red cedars, so strangely exuberant were they, so disdainful of the set, cone-shaped, toy-tree pattern on which I had been used to seeing red cedars built. And when at last a study of the flora compelled me to admit their identity,[1] I turned about and protested that I had never seen red cedars before. ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey

... I went to the child's home. His mother was crying in the kitchen. On the mantelpiece stood a poor little toy. I recall perfectly that it was a small tin or leaden horse, attached to a little ...
— Romance of the Rabbit • Francis Jammes

... muse, thou sing'st no siren strain To him who plows this heaven-domed main! Thy starry eyes look down all-wistful On souls that toy with a ...
— Song-waves • Theodore H. Rand

... our dramas, which used to be all blood, have become all flesh. I wish I were dead—but will continue my harangue because the thought is pellucid. Women selecting men to mate with are of only two kinds, just as there are but two kinds of children in a toy-shop. One child sets its fancy on one partic"—the orator paused, then continued—"on one certain toy and will make a distressing scene if she doesn't get it: she will have that one; she will go straight to it, clasp it and keep it; she won't have any other. The other kind of woman is ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington

... had arranged my hair in sausage curls on each side of my head in even more perfect order and regularity than usual. Besides my clothes, I had a beautiful "property" to be proud of. This was a go-cart, which had been made in the theater by Mr. Bradshaw, and was an exact copy of a child's toy as depicted on a Greek vase. It was my duty to drag this little cart about the stage, and on the first night, when Mr. Kean as Leontes told me to "go play," I obeyed his instructions with such vigor that I tripped over the handle and came down on my back! ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry

... in the Far West. He is only seven years old. He has no brothers or sisters to play with him, so he has to amuse himself. He makes railroads and bridges and houses with bits of rock. He has a toy shovel and a pickaxe and a little axe that will cut. He is very happy ...
— The Nursery, November 1873, Vol. XIV. No. 5 • Various

... her touch behold Transformed at once the warlike aims of old! The mighty falchion to a penknife shrinks, The mailed meshes from the purse's links; The sturdy lance a bodkin now appears, A bunch of tooth-picks once a hundred spears; A painted toy behold the keen-edged axe! See men of iron ...
— The Hawarden Visitors' Hand-Book - Revised Edition, 1890 • William Henry Gladstone

... toy dog is covered with dust, But sturdy and stanch he stands; And the little toy soldier is red with rust, And his musket moulds in his hands. Time was when the little toy dog was new, And the soldier was passing fair; And that was the time ...
— Graded Memory Selections • Various

... of the Medici, the Sagrestia Nuova, is a ponderous and dismal toy. It is a huge mass of expensive, solemn, and insipid magnificence, erected over the carcasses of as contemptible a family as ever rioted above the earth, or rotted under it. The only man of the race, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various

... joy! Adieu! my love and pleasure! To sport and toy We have no longer leisure. Fa ...
— Tudor and Stuart Love Songs • Various

... me,' cried Ralegh sarcastically, 'me, the infuser of these treasons! Me, the cause of all his miseries, and the destruction of his house!' Coke asserted: 'He is a party and cannot come. The law is against it.' 'It is a toy to tell me of law,' was the reply, 'I defy law. I stand on the facts.' At one moment his passionate appeal seemed to have awed the Court into justice. Cecil asked if he would really abide by Cobham's words. ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing

... Then you know where I got the poison with which I tipped the silly toy with which that weak man fooled ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green

... severally think that it rests with each one of them what shall be accounted good, and what bad. They all mistake their own toy-trumpets for the ...
— The Art of Literature • Arthur Schopenhauer

... moved as one who treads enchanted ground. The little creature in her arms wore an air of deep suspicion. His pointed head turned to and fro with ferret-like movements. His sharp red eyes darted hither and thither almost apprehensively. He was like a toy ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell

... thinking myself that I really had no right to take you away from your mother. It was very stupid of me, but I thought this palace was so dull, and that I should be much happier if I just had a merry little girl to play in it, and I hoped you would take my crown for a toy and let me be your playmate. It was very ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various

... Society the famous paper detailing his recent experiments with the compound microscope. Aided by Tully, a celebrated optician, Lister succeeded in making of the microscope a practical scientific implement rather than a toy. With the help of his own instrument Lister was able to settle the long mooted question as to the true form of the red corpuscles of ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson

... of frost in the night, and the atmosphere was so rarified this morning that every object seemed to meet the eye with equal distinctness—with the effect, somehow, of a Dutch painting. A little black dog jumping up excitedly outside the fishmonger's, a woman in the doorway of the little toy-shop taking down a bundle of wooden spades, a red-faced farmer getting out of his trap at the bank—all looked equally clear, lacking the usual hazy effect of the damp air. It was partly for this reason, perhaps, that Caroline felt as if everybody were pressing ...
— The Privet Hedge • J. E. Buckrose

... joyous and natural, boy and woman, fun and frolic; but always the pride was there, vibrant, tense, intrinsic, the basic stuff of which she was builded. She was a woman, frank, outspoken, straight- looking, plastic, democratic; but toy she was not. At times, to him, she seemed to glint an impression of steel—thin, jewel-like steel. She seemed strength in its most delicate terms and fabrics. He fondled the impression of her as of silverspun wire, of fine leather, of twisted hair-sennit from the heads of ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London

... when he learned in reply that his correspondent was a casual dock labourer, and had but scanty hours of leisure in which to read and think and seek into the recesses of nature, while his means of observation consisted of a toy microscope bought for a shilling at a fair. Casting about for some means of lending the man a helping hand, he bethought him of the Science and Art Department, and wrote on December 30 ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley

... Mrs. Watson replied. "The very night she was stolen away I showed her the presents we made for Danny. She was so much interested in the toy boat, horse and cart John made. She was very bright and happy that night. Poor dear, she little knew what ...
— The King's Arrow - A Tale of the United Empire Loyalists • H. A. Cody

... when she finds her little boy playing with a sharp knife, or the looking-glass, or some dainty dish, does not snatch it away with a slap on his cheek or harsh words, but quietly and gently substitutes a safer and more interesting toy, and ...
— When the Holy Ghost is Come • Col. S. L. Brengle

... her lovely fair hair crowning her like a helmet and her face beaming brightly, she still marched on and on with such an awakening of will and strength that, behind her, you could hear her car leap and rattle over the rough slope of the flagstones, as though it had been a mere toy. ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola

... the ring, or, from her snowy arm, The promis'd bracelet may thy force employ; Her feign'd reluctance, height'ning every charm, Shall add new value to the ravish'd toy. ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward

... hack drivers were shouting "To the Eagle House," "To the Washington House," "This way to the Lake," "Just starting for Greytop;" and through their yells came the popping of fire-crackers, the explosion of torpedoes, the banging of toy-guns, and the crash of a firemen's band trying to play the Merry Widow while they were being packed into ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton

... their denial that the inspector was staggered, and had almost come to believe that Mrs. St. Clair had been deluded when, with a cry, she sprang at a small deal box which lay upon the table and tore the lid from it. Out there fell a cascade of children's bricks. It was the toy which he had ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

... "Anything is better than this—this stifled life down here." And seeing that Hetty and Constance were obviously developing objections, she plunged at once into a demand for help. "I've got nothing in the world to pack with except a toy size portmanteau. Can you ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells

... Mack poises the great hammer in his hand, swinging it gently backward and forward as if it had been a boy's toy, the great muscles in arms and back rippling up and down in firm full waves under his white skin, for he is now stripped to the waist ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor

... the winged word in daily use to mark those of us who may still cling to the effete and obsolete belief that music remains a science, difficult of acquirement and not either a toy art, or a mere nerve titillater. We are not, sir, by any means ashamed to bear the stigma of being academic; on the contrary, we feel it a genuine compliment—gratifying because, although perhaps unintentionally it implies that we have acquired ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various

... and means were under discussion, he would break in and display a moldboard, a colter or a new clevis, with a letter from Farmer John Johnson of Jones' Crossroads, as to its efficiency. Then when the board did not wax enthusiastic over his new toy, he would slide out and forget to come back. His heart was set on making a better tool at less expense to the consumer, than the world had ever seen. Thus would he lessen labor and increase production. So besides great talent he had a unique simplicity, which ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard

... Durst not look on those smiling years, When Magdal-castle was thy seat, Where all was sumptuous, rare, and neat. Why lies this hair despised now Which once thy care and art did show? Who then did dress the much-loved toy In spires, globes, angry curls and coy, Which with skilled negligence seemed shed About thy curious, wild, young head? Why is this rich, this pistic nard Spilt, and the box quite broke and marred? What ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan



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