"Trick" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and were found to consist of sentences, coherent and intelligible each for itself, but with little or no connection with each other. Of the Hebrew, a small portion only could be traced to the Bible; the remainder seemed to be in the Rabbinical dialect. All trick or conspiracy was out of the question. Not only had the young woman ever been a harmless, simple creature; but she was evidently labouring under a nervous fever. In the town, in which she had been resident for many years as a servant in different ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... the Pastor; "but of traditions of places, there are very many, and, as an example, there was in Randers province an island, and on the island a mansion; and when the family owning it were absent, three women-servants determined to play the priest a trick. They dressed up a sow like a sick person in bed, and sent for the priest to administer the sacrament to a dying person. The priest, however, saw the wicked deception, and at once left the island in his boat. Immediately the whole island sank as soon as he lifted his ...
— A Danish Parsonage • John Fulford Vicary
... means was Louis Napoleon permitted to do even what the people liked to see done? By no other means, but by flattering the principle of Democracy; he restored the universal suffrage; it is an execrable trick, to be sure—it is a shadow given for reality; but still it proves that the democratic spirit is so consolidated in France, that even despotic ambition must flatter it. Well, depend upon it, this democracy, which the ...
— Select Speeches of Kossuth • Kossuth
... forbade him the pilothouse after that, and he spent the rest of the trip "an emancipated slave" listening to George Ealer's flute and his readings from Goldsmith and Shakespeare; playing chess with him sometimes, and learning a trick which he would use himself in the long after-years—that of taking back the last move and running out the game differently ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... fully proved in France; the announcement a year ago that examination would be null or formal having had at once the effect of greatly increasing travel. And as there is not a custom-house in all Europe where a man who knows the trick cannot pull through his luggage by bribery—the exceptions being miraculously rare—the absurdity and folly of ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... saw her again, not even when she died. I loved the mother, and she deceived me and disgraced me and broke my heart, and I only wish she had killed me; and I was beginning to love her child, and I vowed she should not live to trick me too. I had suffered as no man I know had suffered; in a way a boy like you cannot understand, and that no one can understand who has not gone to hell and been forced to live after it. And was I to go through that again? Was I to ...
— Van Bibber and Others • Richard Harding Davis
... and his following hunting, when certain ominous fair women lured them to a cave,—women who were but insubstantial wraiths,—to hold them captive till the seasons ran full circle, summer giving place again to winter and spring. But Ossin, being himself of more than human wisdom, found a way to trick the spirits; for daily he cut chips from his spear and sent them floating down the spring, till Find at last saw them, and knew the tokens as Ossin's, and, coming, delivered his son ...
— Ireland, Historic and Picturesque • Charles Johnston
... On my honour, only once. The Duke is a fairly good husband, I repeat. But you deserve punishment for this night's trick of drawing me out. What ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... 1776, he wrote:—'I have ventured to produce Hamlet with alterations. It was the most imprudent thing I ever did in all my life; but I had sworn I would not leave the stage till I had rescued that noble play from all the rubbish of the fifth act. I have brought it forth without the grave-digger's trick and the fencing match. The alterations were received with general approbation beyond my most warm expectations.' Garrick Corres., ii. 126. See ante, ii. 78, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... name, but it was the way he signed other people's cheques, and your father and mother will tell you that this is a very mean trick—lived partly on an island, and partly on board ...
— The Pirate's Pocket Book • Dion Clayton Calthrop
... turned out that this trick was quite different. You place a book (Macaulay's Essays or what not) on the jam-pot and sit on the book, one heel only touching the ground. In the right hand you have a box of matches, in the left a candle. The jam-pot, of course, is on its side, so that it ...
— The Holiday Round • A. A. Milne
... Mr Anderson, I will tell you. It was because the scoundrel played a regular pantomime trick upon us—yes, sir, a regular pantomime trick. Look yonder," continued the captain, pointing towards the shore. "What can you ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn
... rest here, however, for the colonel suspecting that we were implicated, next day we were ordered as if for marching, just as if we were going to leave the place that very day, but the men being quite up to that trick, knowing that the French were still in front, concealed their shares of the money in and around the cellar. I remember well the manner in which my own and one of my fellow-comrades' shares were hidden: there was a heap of pumpkins in the cellar, and in one of these we enclosed ...
— The Autobiography of Sergeant William Lawrence - A Hero of the Peninsular and Waterloo Campaigns • William Lawrence
... are famous the world over, and in this line of books the reader is given a full description of how the films are made—the scenes of little dramas, indoors and out, trick pictures to satisfy the curious, soul-stirring pictures of city affairs, life in the Wild West, among the cowboys and Indians, thrilling rescues along the seacoast, the daring of picture hunters in the jungle among savage beasts, and ...
— The Outdoor Girls on Pine Island - Or, A Cave and What It Contained • Laura Lee Hope
... has failed, the rapture fled, Not he, not he, the wild sweet witch is dead, And though he cherisheth The babe most strangely born from out her death, Some tender trick of her it hath, maybe, It is not she. ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... seen nothing of him this evening. But this is perhaps a trick that Monsieur le Papa is playing me; he fears to give me his little revenge of which he spoke, and wishes to keep out of my way. What do you ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... this was all a trick to get hold of my skin. The man said it on his way to the door, his ape-face shining dim as he turned it a little back in the direction of my uncle, who followed with the candle. I lost the last part of the sentence in the terror which sent me bounding up the stair in my usual four-footed ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... in her draperies, something fell to the ground with a little tinkle. But I knew that trick too and I did not move. Finally she went away without bending to retrieve it and when I looked around I saw that all the fleece-haired children had stolen away, leaving their playthings lying on the curbing. But one or two of the gaffers on the stone benches, who were old enough ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... each time pausing for an air sample. Each time they scanned the valley where the village of Appletree should be. There was no change. Now the unlikely idea of a superimposed mirage was dispelled. The disappearance of the colony was no trick of vision. The ship hovered, at the last, not more than fifty feet from ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton
... sleeve. "Straighten your ears up, pronto!" she commanded, nevertheless laughing. Then a strain of her father's blood was apparent as she seized the reins and stood back from the horse. "Because you're bluffing this morning, I'm going to make you do your latest trick. Down!" she commanded. The pony extended his foreleg and begged to shake hands. "No! Down!" With a grunt the horse dropped to his knees, rolled to his side, but still kept his head raised. "Clear down! Dead, Challenge!" The ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... here touches of execrable taste, such as the punning trick with man and manners, suggesting a false antithesis; or the opposition of the words deprave and deprive; but we have in them only an instance of how the meretricious may co-exist with the lovely. The passage is fine and powerful, notwithstanding ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... the beginning of the fourteenth century as a French art. This very decided example of Italian work is already different from the French work of the same period. The profile foliages have already acquired that peculiar trick of sudden change and reversion of curve, showing the other side of a leaf with change of colour, which is a marked characteristic of all fourteenth-century Italian illumination. For examples of it, the ...
— Illuminated Manuscripts • John W. Bradley
... leaders like Seward, Chase and Sumner, he actually succeeded in persuading the Senate to pass the bill. That he was able to do this, is a great tribute to his powers as a politician and as an orator. He spoke from midnight until dawn, employing every possible trick of rhetoric and logic to carry his point, and showing a courtesy and restraint in his attack which won the sympathy even of his opponents. "Never had a bad cause been more ...
— The Battle of Principles - A Study of the Heroism and Eloquence of the Anti-Slavery Conflict • Newell Dwight Hillis
... a fine trick I played on the English a few months ago. We were trekking along quietly one day when I observed a heliograph glitter on a hill about ten miles away. I at once fixed my instrument, and soon learnt that it was a British helio post. I sent him a heliogram ...
— With Steyn and De Wet • Philip Pienaar
... ate it sweetly. And yet they were so nice in other things, that when I had fetched water, and had put the dish I dipped the water with into the kettle of water which I brought, they would say they would knock me down; for they said, it was a sluttish trick. ...
— Captivity and Restoration • Mrs. Mary Rowlandson
... cunning only when they have fools to deal with. Why don't my girl play me such a trick? Let her cunning over- reach my ...
— The Duenna • Richard Brinsley Sheridan
... deceive or to hide their meaning by a camouflage of terms. These terms are chosen to conceal or deceive. Terms that suggest advance, improvement, learning, science, etc., are used to describe unworthy theories, beliefs and movements. It is an unfair trick to win and ...
— The Evolution Of Man Scientifically Disproved • William A. Williams
... levity. However, the never-quite-comprehended affair of the leather bed-cover,(306) has in some degree intimidated her ever since, as she constantly apprehends that, if he were provoked, he would play her some trick. ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... of smiles. He smiled with commendable frequency. Perhaps he knew that his rows of teeth were as perfect as ordinary human teeth could very well be, and that this superlative smile was in consequence no trifling addition to his other attractions of person. He had a little trick of flinging his head back when he laughed aloud, that showed to still greater advantage all of these wonderful teeth, and his eyelashes, and even called attention to the perfect straightness ...
— The Heart of Arethusa • Francis Barton Fox
... say, had the Texan Star escaped from the Alabama, nothing short of the Presidency, or a statue in marble, or the deed graved in letters of gold, or some other equally ridiculous token of admiration, would have awaited the gallant master, and the fame of his clever trick would have been handed ...
— The Cruise of the Alabama and the Sumter • Raphael Semmes
... out-trick them, isn't it? You make a will leaving your money to the Cause, and then ...
— A Man of Means • P. G. Wodehouse and C. H. Bovill
... it was funny," said he, "that a man in your position couldn't raise one dollar and twelve cents. It was that that made me believe you were playing a trick to see if I would violate ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... year's delay, to allow mutual trial and reflection. This gives us the channel for constant information which you advise me to establish, and I shall have the opportunity to learn if the impostor makes any communication to them, or if there be any news of the brother. If by any trick or chicanery (for I will never believe that there was a marriage) a lawsuit that might be critical or hazardous can be cooked up, I can, I am sure, make such terms with Sidney, through his love for my daughter, as would effectively and permanently secure me from all further ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... difficult thing to be full of three things at once, yet the faults, follies, and vices within me seem to fill me altogether, each in turn, and yet altogether. In fact, they put me in mind of two liquids with which I once saw an Italian conjurer perform a curious trick. He filled a glass with a certain liquid, which looked like water, up to the very brim, and then poured in a considerable quantity of another liquid without increasing the liquid in the glass by a drop. Now sometimes my folly seems ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... upon the ground, And answer'd softly, "This is William's child?" "And did I not," said Allan, "did I not Forbid you, Dora?" Dora said again: "Do with me as you will, but take the child And bless him for the sake of him that's gone!" And Allan said: "I see it is a trick Got up betwixt you and the woman there. I must be taught my duty, and by you! You knew my word was law, and yet you dared To slight it. Well—for I will take the boy; But go you hence, and never see me more." ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... present, the throne having other supports, they did not hurt that so much as they did the King; for the old barons, taking Dicotome's prodigality to such creatures so ill that they deposed him, got the trick of it, and never gave over setting up and pulling down their kings according to their various interests, and that faction of the White and Red, into which they have been thenceforth divided, till Panurgus, ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington
... a trick, and as big a shame as I've ever seen," she said, hotly. "You know I was brought up with this, and I never looked at it with the eyes of a stranger before. If ever I get my fingers on those deeds, I'll make short work ...
— A Daughter of the Land • Gene Stratton-Porter
... marks so much of modern literature, to read him is as bracing as a northwest wind. He blows the mind clear. In ripeness of mind and bluff heartiness of expression, he takes rank with the best. His phrase is always a short-cut to his sense, for his estate was too spacious for him to need that trick of winding the path of his thought about, and planting it out with clumps of epithet, by which the landscape-gardeners of literature give to a paltry half-acre the air of a park. In poetry, to be next-best is, in one sense, ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... emperor's plans in their entirety, and accordingly did not care that either they or Germanicus should trouble themselves about anything further; the instructions delivered were supposed to comprise everything. Now when these men had arrived and the soldiers learned about the trick Germanicus had played, a suspicion sprang up that the presence of the senators meant the overthrow of their leader's measures, and this led to new turmoil. The men-at-arms almost killed some of the envoys and to the point ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. 4 • Cassius Dio
... the decision went against me," answered the lieutenant, scowling. "How will you like it if I promise to pay you back fully for that trick? Are you ...
— Dave Darrin on Mediterranean Service - or, With Dan Dalzell on European Duty • H. Irving Hancock
... Schumann) is the most complete and perfect poem of this period. Like "Epochs," it is a cycle of poems, and the verse has caught the very trick of music,—alluring, baffling, and evasive. This time we have the landscape of the night, the glamour of moon and stars,—pictures half real and half unreal, mystic imaginings, fancies, dreams, and the enchantment ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus
... 1. 1.—Oenomaus, King of Elis, offered his daughter and his kingdom to any man who should beat him in a chariot race; those who failed he slew. Pelops challenged him and won the race through a trick of his servant, Myrtilus, who treacherously took the linchpins out of Oenomaus's chariot. Oenomaus was thrown out and killed; Pelops took the kingdom, but in remorse or indignation threw Myrtilus into the sea (1. 192, p. 11). In some stories ...
— The Iphigenia in Tauris • Euripides
... he rode was quite unbroken and vicious as it could be. Between horse and man a fierce struggle for mastery raged the whole time, the horse rearing, plunging, buck-jumping, and putting into practice every conceivable trick to rid itself of its burden; while Lucero plied whip and spur with tremendous energy and poured out torrents of strange adjectives. At one moment he would come into violent collision with my old sober beast, at another ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... Company, and some years later obtained a pension. Of course, all this trouble with the Field supplied both him and his father with ample cause for grumbling. Samuel had never liked his brother Edward, who seemed almost spitefully to be turning this trick against him in his old age, and he handed on his grievance to John and his wife. The small, wooden house in Church Street contained a narrow, ungracious family life, it can be seen, of petty economies and few interests. No wonder that the Field—the one important family possession ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... dast to do such a trick, Lauchie McKitterick!" cried Mrs. Winters, shaking her fist in his face. "Harriet's been up helpin' Hannah all mornin', an' she ain't ready for him. Take him on to the station, an' we'll run up an' help her red up before he comes. ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith
... rights. We must be all mercenary soldiers, wild fanatics, pensioned informers, or feudal serfs toiling for daily bread, ere we can patiently endure this revolting system of jealousy and suspicion—this cold, selfish scheme of trick and expedient. Astonishment and terror may awhile paralyze the national spirit; the remembered miseries of civil war may render the phantom of peace so alluring as to induce many to call a deleterious intoxication felicity. But unless ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... no signature. It was written in some red fluid—blood perhaps—a mean and sorry trick! On the outside was scrawled a direction to Mademoiselle de Caylus. And the packet was sealed with the ...
— The House of the Wolf - A Romance • Stanley Weyman
... "I should be incapable of so dishonorable an action. I know that a lawyer gets credit for possessing but lax notions on the score of honor, but you can scarcely suspect that I should be guilty of underhand work toward you. I never was guilty of a mean trick in my life, to my recollection, and I do not think I ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... the kernel of the nut. I thought I'd do it somehow. Thank you kindly, ma'am, for listening to me. Miss Sibyl Ray, you may be poor in the future, but at least you'll have a light heart; and as to the dirty trick you did, I guess you won't do a second, for you have learned your lesson. I'll be wishing you good-morning now, ma'am," he added, turning to Mrs. Haddo, "for I must get back to my work. It's twelve pounds o' butter the cook wants sent up without fail to-night, ...
— Betty Vivian - A Story of Haddo Court School • L. T. Meade
... I; "I don't believe it"; for I thought it was only a doctor's trick, and one I had ...
— The Autobiography of a Quack And The Case Of George Dedlow • S. Weir Mitchell
... pleasant back at the Diamond Dot after things got settled again. Barbie had become a curious little trick with a way of doin' strange things in a sober old-fashioned manner like as if she was a hundred years of age, but was tryin' to ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason
... lies in the light itself, and not in any particular object. That brilliant blue cloak of yours is not blue of itself, but because of the light that falls on it. If you cannot believe this, go into a room lighted only by gas, and hey, presto! the colour is changed as if it were a conjuring trick. You cannot tell now by looking at the cloak whether it is blue or green! Therefore you must admit that as the colour changes with the change of light it must be due to light, and not to any quality belonging to the material of the cloak. But, you may protest, if ...
— The Children's Book of Stars • G.E. Mitton
... is no trick for a bunch of canvasbacks," said the foreman of the gang. "Get busy, boys, quick now! Some of you bring some gasoline torches so's we kin ...
— The Boy Scout Fire Fighters • Irving Crump
... some studs and links, and leave ample evidence of having boned those rotten robes to-night. That, if you come to think of it, was what you writing chaps would call the quintessential Q.E.F. I have not only shown these dear Criminologists that I couldn't possibly have done this trick, but that there's some other fellow who could and did, and whom they've been perfect asses ...
— A Thief in the Night • E. W. Hornung
... than Randolph. Lulu resembles his father curiously in all things except in the paternal habit of swearing. Once, when an attempt by the Opposition to snatch a victory in a thin House had been foiled, Harcourt said savagely across the table: "So that d——d dirty trick has failed!" Hicks Beach sprang up to ask the Speaker if such language were Parliamentary. Speaker Gully was too discreet to have heard the words. Dilke remembered being in company with Harcourt and Mrs. Procter, ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... the street, bleakly windswept. He leaned back and drummed a bit with his fingers on the satin-smooth cloth. "Now and then. Tell me, Fanny, what would you say, off-hand, was the most interesting thing you see from here? You used to have a trick of picking out what they call the human side. Your mother ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... The trick proved worth while, for plainly they could make out human voices; also a certain rumbling sound that Jack imagined might be caused by the rush back and forth of a small hand truck on which cases of imported liquid ...
— Eagles of the Sky - With Jack Ralston Along the Air Lanes • Ambrose Newcomb
... decided to let Big-foot go back after he has eaten. He can remain with you until ten-thirty, when he takes his trick on guard. Then the rest of you may go out if you wish. It isn't fair to leave the Pinto there alone all night. If I change my plans I'll send out Master Ned or Walter. ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Texas - Or, The Veiled Riddle of the Plains • Frank Gee Patchin
... near-sighted, his gray eyes were bright and wild, so wild at times that they frightened those upon whom they were turned. He wore his own hair, which was coarse and straight, and in an age when every man wore a wig this made him look absurd. He had a trick of making queer gestures with hands and feet. He would shake his head and roll himself about, and would mutter to himself until strangers though that ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... he crossed the track one day when the train was coming in; and the more he thought about it, the surer he felt that some day he would have to do it. He was well acquainted by that time with the engines, and the engineers too, and his trick of standing astride the rail and looking up with sparkling, defiant eyes at the engine's noble front was only a sort of ...
— Emerson's Wife and Other Western Stories • Florence Finch Kelly
... unwillingness of the people to believe in its existence or from the influence of designing men diverting their attention from the quarter whence it approaches to a source from which it can never come. This is the old trick of those who would usurp the government of their country. In the name of democracy they speak, warning the people against the influence of wealth and the danger of aristocracy. History, ancient and modern, is full of such examples. Caesar became the ...
— Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Harrison • James D. Richardson
... to buy a thrip's worth of candy went slowly out again after trying in vain to attract the attention of the hitherto prompt and friendly storekeeper. Tommy Tinktums, the cat, seeing that his master was sitting down, came forward with the expectation of being told to perform his famous "bouncing" trick, a feat that was at once the wonder and delight of the youngsters around Hillsborough. But Tommy Tinktums was not commanded to bounce; and so he contented himself with washing his face, pausing every now and then to watch his master ...
— Free Joe and Other Georgian Sketches • Joel Chandler Harris
... eagerly, 'all that pretending not to care, and that it was a trick of Stella's, was nothing but reaction. And then, you know, Clem, you ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... fun and mischief about this time, so she slipped up slyly behind Mr. Pain while he was talking and snatched away the rod before he could turn round. Mrs. Love smiled on seeing this little trick, and they all went down to the parlor and seated themselves with much gravity. Little Susy sat in the midst in her own low chair looking wide awake, you may depend. Her papa and mamma sat on each side like two judges. Mrs. Love rocked herself in the rocking-chair in ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... knew his disposition and mode of warfare, to attack the American lines forthwith. It must be left to the historian to tell how the battle raged with varying fortunes until Howard's gallant Marylanders taught the British regulars that the despised provincials had learned the trick of the bayonet, and decided the issue of the day. Up to this moment the cavalry, which had been posted in reserve behind a slight wooded eminence, had been chafing for a hand in the fray. As has been ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... said Viner, after looking closely over the cabinet, back, front and sides. "It opens by a trick—a secret. Probably you press something somewhere and ...
— The Middle of Things • J. S. Fletcher
... of navies burnt at sea, No noise of late-spawned Tityries, No closet plot or open vent That frights men with a Parliament: No new device or late-found trick, To read by the stars the kingdom's sick; No gin to catch the State, or wring The free-born nostrils of the king, We send to you, but here a jolly Verse crowned with ivy and with holly; That tells of winter's tales and ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow—Book 3 - Christmas Poems from 'round the World • Various
... Nat?" asked Dave. He remembered how the money-lender's son had played more than one mean trick while ...
— Dave Porter and the Runaways - Last Days at Oak Hall • Edward Stratemeyer
... of the book, Menhardoc, never once appears in the body-text of the book. But it has a sort of mysterious Cornish sound to it, and that does the trick. ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn
... is how it was. There's a small girl named Lilly Brass—a sweet little tot of four years old or thereabouts, and Billy's very fond of her. Lilly has a brother named Tommy, who's as full of mischief as an egg is full of meat, and he has a trick of getting on the edge of the pier, near where they live, and tryin' to walk on it and encouraging Lilly to follow him. The boy had been often warned not to do it, but he didn't mind, and my Billy grew ...
— The Young Trawler • R.M. Ballantyne
... we can give her away without any trouble. I knew Burns could do the trick. It's a bargain at two thousand dollars to get a girl in the shape to give away. She could give us no end of bother if we had to keep her. Go find that flea, Clendenning, and tell him to come to me immediately; I think he is ...
— The Daredevil • Maria Thompson Daviess
... Mantinea. He's a knavish fellow; his backers are recalling their bets. But he hopes to win on a trick; beware, lest he ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... of the Press is not a direct and open power. It depends upon a trick of deception; and no trick of deception works if the trickster passes a certain degree ...
— The Free Press • Hilaire Belloc
... and raised the gun to his shoulder, threatening again to shoot me if I did not stop. The trick only gave me the advantage, for I gained several rods while he was making the feint with the gun. I reached the foot-bridge over the brook, and, profiting by my former experience, I adopted the same course again. I had just time to drag the plank over the stream when my pursuer reached the opposite ...
— Seek and Find - or The Adventures of a Smart Boy • Oliver Optic
... the day Albert Davis was half crazed over his wife," charged the Father; "—hurried him off without a word or a line! A bad trick altogether! Oh, Davis guessed ye had the boy—the wee Johnnie he loved like a father. But he had small time t' hunt, what with his work. And at last ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... the same name. There is a resemblance between the two districts, which amounts to an odd coincidence, particularly with regard to one of the Nivernois hills in the back ground, which presents a strong likeness of Glastonbury Tor. We should have passed through Avalon, but for a trick of the voiturier, who took a cross road to avoid paying the post duty there, and save his money at the expense of our bones. For this manoeuvre he might have been severely punished, ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... be pressed into service. The feat of carrying an armful of sliding sand in proportion to bulk about one-third of the body, is far away and beyond the capacities of human beings, but to the crab, which has acquired the trick of temporary consolidation by pressure, it is merely child's play. Arrived at the mouth of the shaft, it elevates its eyes (which in the dark have rested in neatly fitting recesses) for the purpose of a cautious yet sweeping survey. Seeing nothing alarming, it emerges with the alertness ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... thing served them another trick; it slowly lay over on its side under the weight of the two men, who were now poised like panniers upon the extreme convexity of the silk. This was very perilous for both, but the change of position gave them a little rest, and Phillip shouted instructions ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 26, February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... expected had come to pass. Our heavy shot had fairly frightened the people aboard the galley; they realised at last that a trick had been played upon them, and her commander's great anxiety now evidently was to get as quickly as possible out of the trap that he had been decoyed into. And, with this object, he had suddenly lowered his sails and put his helm hard over, with ...
— The Log of a Privateersman • Harry Collingwood
... see what you mean, but the trick is too old. Remember how the men put their helmets or caps above the breastworks to tempt them to fire. Depend upon it ...
— Fix Bay'nets - The Regiment in the Hills • George Manville Fenn
... consider, we must reflect, we must puzzle our brains, for the gods have been napping this morning, and we must be doubly wide-awake. Irene—our little Irene—and who would have thought it yesterday! It is a good-for-nothing, unspeakably base knave's trick—and now, what can we do to snatch the prey from the gluttonous monster, the savage wild beast, before he can devour our ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... the figures with which it peopled his solitude so real to him, that the creatures of his mind become things, as clear to the memory as if we had seen them. But Spenser's are too often mere names, with no bodies to back them, entered on the Muses' musterroll by the specious trick of personification. There is likewise, in Bunyan, a childlike simplicity and taking-for-granted which win our confidence. His Giant Despair,[296] for example, is by no means the Ossianic figure into which artists who mistake the vague for the sublime ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... secularization question in the person of Jose Maria Padres, Echeandia resolved upon a bold stroke. He delayed meeting Victoria, lured him up to Santa Barbara, and kept him there under various pretexts until he had had time to prepare and issue a decree. This was dated January 6, 1831. It was a political trick, "wholly illegal, uncalled for, and unwise." He decreed immediate secularization of all the Missions, and the turning into towns of Carmel and San Gabriel. The ayuntamiento of Monterey, in accordance with the decree, chose a commissioner for each of the seven Missions of the district. These ...
— The Old Franciscan Missions Of California • George Wharton James
... least four years older than Ned and Alan. Therefore, he gave a little start of surprise. He had been trapped in a trick that he had often worked successfully on many an older person. For Bob Russell, easily the brightest and quickest-witted reporter in his city, thus to be turned down by two "kids" would never do. Without wasting time to deny Ned's charge, ...
— The Air Ship Boys • H.L. Sayler
... played that trick once too often," said old Billy. "It's downright murder in you boys to try and fool me into going up seven long flights of steps on an awful hot ...
— Harper's Young People, September 14, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... to be with them. He left us alone continually. During the whole of that four years he never once spoke in anger to me nor challenged my fidelity. My relationship to him was difficult. We were, quite simply as men, the worst-suited in the world. He had not a trick nor a habit that did not get on my nerves; he was intelligent only in those things that I despised a man for knowing. This would have been well enough had he not persisted in talking about matters of art and literature, of which, of course, he knew nothing. He did it, ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... she careened over under the press of sail than the fog shut the vessel from their sight, and for the next two hours she was invisible, while the captain of the Nautilus had to lie to, for fear of some slippery trick on the part of what was undoubtedly the slaver, since she was more likely to make for the shelter of a creek than to risk ...
— The Black Bar • George Manville Fenn
... do with it.' But he did not write any of them, because these legends are no longer religious: Aphrodite and Artemis and Poseidon are deader than their statues. Another, with a commanding position and every trick of British farce and Parisian drama at his fingers' ends, finally could not write without a sermon to preach, and yet could not find texts more fundamental than the hypocrisies of sham Puritanism, or the matrimonial speculation which makes our young actresses as careful of their reputations ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... called "The Mark of the Beast," to a rather cynical Anglo-Indian officer, he observed moodily, "It's a beastly story. But those devils really can do jolly queer things." It is but to take a commonplace example out of countless more notable ones to mention the many witnesses to the mango trick. Here again we have from time to time to weep over the weak-mindedness that hurriedly dismisses it as the practice of hypnotism. It is as if people were asked to explain how one unarmed Indian had killed three hundred men, and they said it was only the practice of ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... negative in their results, have not afforded any specially exciting sport; but possibly the fascination of the lure is more efficient in fresh than in salt water, and is influential over the habitual caution throughout a certain species of fish only. The trick is worked ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... immediately afterwards?" "Nay, not so, my lord," returned the lady, "but none the less I pray you to look to your health." Then said the King:—"And I am minded to take your advice; wherefore, without giving you further trouble I will leave you." So, angered and incensed beyond measure by the trick which, he saw, had been played upon him, he resumed his mantle and quitted the room with the intention of privily detecting the offender, deeming that he must belong to the palace, and that, whoever he might ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... spectacles did her essential service. Her nephew, a merry boy, who was his aunt's darling, begged so long for these spectacles, that, at last, she lent him the treasure, after having informed him, with many exhortations, that in order to execute the interesting trick, he need only repair to some place where a great many persons were assembled; and then, from a higher position, whence he could overlook the crowd, pass the company in review before him through his ...
— Andersen's Fairy Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... produced by the perfection of health and joyousness and youth; or might be, a lady critic would have whispered, by some other equally effectual means. She had large—very large—wide-opened, clear, and limpid light-blue eyes, with that trick of an appealing look in them which always seems to say to every manly heart, "You, alone of all the harsh, cold, indifferent crowd around us, are he to whom I can look for sympathy, comprehension, and fellow-feeling." And now these eyes looked round from one to another of those ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... it is inconceivable that any imitator but one should have had the power so to catch the very trick of his hand, the very note of his voice, and incredible that the one who might would have set himself to do so: for if this be not indeed the voice and this the hand of Marlowe, then what we find in these verses is not the fidelity of a follower, but the servility of a copyist. No parasitic ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... "Keep your eye peeled for any Hun trick. That fellow nearly got me yesterday with his knife, and he might try to play the same game ...
— Army Boys in the French Trenches • Homer Randall
... wife an inexhaustible source of mental refreshment. He prized beyond measure the feminine inadequacy and excess of her sayings; he had stored away such a variety of these that he was able to talk her personal parlance for an hour together; indeed, he had learned the trick of inventing phrases so much in her manner that Mrs. Kenton never felt quite safe in disowning any monstrous thing attributed to her. Her drowse now became a little nap, and presently a delicious doze, in which she ...
— A Fearful Responsibility and Other Stories • William D. Howells
... told him that I believed someone had played him a dastardly trick. Shall I tell you what ...
— Against Odds - A Detective Story • Lawrence L. Lynch
... was his conduct in slipping away and leaving me stranded like this. Surely it was the very last trick to play on an accomplice. In fact it settled the matter. But why then did ...
— The Man From the Clouds • J. Storer Clouston
... razed and warriors slain, We share with justice, as with toil we gain; But to resume whate'er thy avarice craves (That trick of tyrants) may be borne by slaves. Yet if our chief for plunder only fight, The spoils of Ilion shall thy loss requite, Whene'er, by Jove's decree, our conquering powers Shall humble to the ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... that you bought in Syracuse. Tell her, in as good French or as good English as you can muster, what she asks; and if, after you have answered her lead, she plays again, do you play again; and if she plays again, do you play again,—till one or other of you takes the trick. But do you think of nothing else, while the talk goes on, but the subject she has started, and of her; do not think of yourself, but address yourself to the single business of meeting her inquiry as well as you can. Then, if it becomes proper ...
— How To Do It • Edward Everett Hale
... as he dashed in through the open doorway. "I've done the trick; got the skipper of the Concordia to allow me to work my passage out to Port Natal as ordinary seaman at a shilling a month. I 'sign on' at the shipping office the day after to- morrow, and have to be on board by eight o'clock the ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... should be absent till the Brief came, because Satan had contrived a great plot against the coming of the Provincial; that I was to have no fear,—He would help me. I repeated this to the rector, and he told me that I must go by all means, though others were saying I ought not to go, that it was a trick of Satan to bring some evil upon me there, and that I ought to send word ...
— The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus • Teresa of Avila
... peg', and phanda, 'a noose', equivalent to the Persian tasmabaz, meaning 'playing tricks with a strap'. Creagh, a private in a British regiment at Cawnpore about 1803, is said to have initiated three men into the peg and strap trick, as practised by English rogues. These men became the leaders of three Tasmabaz Thug gangs, whose proceedings are described by Mr. R. Montgomery in Selections of the Records of Government, N.W.P., vol. i, p. 312. A strap is doubled ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... to have a kind of mythological ring, and the stories of benign fairies, changing everything into gold, sound likewise like an echo from the long-forgotten forest of our common Aryan home. If we know how the trick of dragging stolen cattle backwards into their place of hiding, so that their footprints might not lead to the discovery of the thief, appears again and again in the mythology of different Aryan nations, then ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... not commonly seen in; and in the fourth place, there must be presence of mind, and a resolution that is not to be overcome by failures: this last is an essential requisite; for want of it many people do not excel in conversation. Now I want it: I throw up the game upon losing a trick.' I wondered to hear him talk thus of himself, and said, 'I don't know, Sir, how this may be; but I am sure you beat other people's cards out of their hands.' I doubt whether he heard this remark. While he went on talking triumphantly, I was ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... grasp of Meyerbeer's genius, and to explain in part why he was so prone to gorgeous effects, aside from that tendency of the Israelitish nature which delights in show and glitter. We see something in it akin to the trick of the rhetorician, who seeks to hide poverty of thought under glittering phrases. Yet Meyerbeer rose to occasions with a force that was something gigantic. Once his work was clearly defined in a mind not powerfully creative, he expressed it in music ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... Montalais, "Monsieur Malicorne is so robust that a night passed in the open air with the beautiful stars above him will not do him any harm, and it will be a just punishment for the trick he ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... deck and get a breath of fresh air. I recognized him as Benson, the man who, Wilson had said, reported having seen Lys with von Schoenvorts two nights before. I motioned him on deck and then called him to one side, asking if he had seen anything out of the way or unusual during his trick on watch the night before. The fellow scratched his head a moment and said, "No," and then as though it was an afterthought, he told me that he had seen the girl in the crew's room about midnight talking with the German commander, but as there hadn't seemed to him to be any harm in ...
— The Land That Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... started for the fence. His first thought was to drop his bundle and throw his arms around Alec's neck; then he realized that this would be worse than his declaring himself to his father—he could then be accused of attempting deception by the trick of a disguise. So he hurried on to where his horse was tied—his back to Alec, the bundle shifted to his left shoulder that he might hide his face the better until he was out of sight of the office, the old man stumbling on, calling ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... similar to drunkenness which characterizes love; I knew that it was the aureole which crowned my well-beloved. But that she should excite such heart-throbs, that she should evoke such phantoms with nothing but her beauty, her flowers, her motley costume, and a certain trick of dancing she had learned from some merry-andrew; and that without a word, without a thought, without even appearing to know it! What was chaos, if it required seven days to make ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset
... for that trick, baboon, I'le Smoke you: the rogue sweats, as if he had eaten Grains, he broyles, if I do come to the ...
— Beaumont & Fletcher's Works (1 of 10) - The Custom of the Country • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... the ideal; in a word, the imagination should have full sway. The great dramatist is a creator; he is the sovereign, and governs his own world. The realist is only a copyist. He does not need genius. All he wants is industry and the trick of imitation. On the stage, the real should be idealized, the ordinary should be transfigured; that is, the deeper meaning of things should be given. As we make music of common air, and statues of stone, so the ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... ideal, let us grant him full liberty to make his spoon or spoil his horn, and let us judge afterwards concerning the result. The famous blackened page and the empty pages (all omitted in this new edition) are part of Sterne's method. They may seem to us trick-work and foolery; but, if we consider, they link on to his notion that writing is but a name for conversation; they are included in his demand that in writing a book a man should be allowed to "go cluttering away like hey-go mad." "You may take my word"—it is Sterne ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... enjoyed the company and the fun so much, that he tried the same trick again, a few days later. Again the men ...
— Story Hour Readers Book Three • Ida Coe and Alice J. Christie
... expect you," said the lady, always with a slight Cockney accent. "But I thought how silly it would be for me to miss the vanishing trick just because you couldn't come. So in I ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett
... so difficult and graceful. In Canada, where frost is a certainty, and where the covered "rinks" make skating an indoor sport, it is not odd that great perfection should be attained. But as fast as Canadians bring over a new figure or a new trick it is picked up, and critics may dispute as to whether the bold and dashing style of the English school of skaters is not preferable to the careful and smooth, but somewhat pretty and niggling manner of the colonists. Our skating ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... apprise those of your old friends who may yet survive, of that revocation of unjust obloquy, which this royal deed implies—Alban Morley, who would turn his back on the highest noble in Britain if but guilty of some jockey trick on the turf! Live henceforth openly, and in broad daylight if you please; and trust to us three—the Soldier, the Lawyer, the Churchman—to give to this paper that value which your Sovereign's advisers ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... look or pose grips the heart harder than any spoken word and so it was that this unstudied trick of expression found the vulnerable spot in Burt's armor—the spot which might have remained impervious indefinitely to any plea. It went straight to his one weakness, his single point of susceptibility, and that was his unsuspected but excessive fondness ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... Dunscombe, eh? Well, you're a smart young feller, Mr. Dunscombe. There ain't another man on the Ottaway that could 'a' done that trick on me. Old Dan McEachran will make your fortun' for this, and I don't begrudge it. You're a man—that's so. If ever I hear any feller saying to the contrayry he's got ...
— Old Man Savarin and Other Stories • Edward William Thomson
... the mouth of the harbour, as if inviting attack. Commodore Langworth, with the Pulteney, Trial, Neptune's Prize, a bombketch, and five of the largest gallivats, was sent out. The Angrian fleet stood away to the southward, followed by Langworth. The demonstration was a trick to draw off the Bombay fighting ships. When they were well out of the way, Sumbhajee made a sudden attack on Mannajee's territories with two thousand men and forty or fifty gallivats. Sumbhajee had gained over a number of Mannajee's officers, and ...
— The Pirates of Malabar, and An Englishwoman in India Two Hundred Years Ago • John Biddulph
... leave the children too much alone—had hidden his mother's shoes, and I was laughing heartily, because my Baner won't let any of the little ones live with me, she always says I spoil them, and so I was glad she should have the trick played her—when all of a sudden there was such a loud knocking at the house-door, that I thought there must be a fire and let the child drop off my lap. Down the stairs I ran, three steps at a time, as fast as my long legs would carry ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... "I could sho' you forty, but I'll tell you what's crackin' good fun an' it'll test you mor'n knowin' the birds—that's easy. But the hard thing is to find their nests an' then to tell by the eggs what bird it is. That's the cracker-jack trick." ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... lucky. She burst some boiler tubes in my watch. We were steaming hard, head to an ugly sea, with a lot of cattle on board, and were forced to keep her going. Two firemen were scalded, but I was able to put the patent-stoppers in the tubes. I used a trick I'd learned on a Canadian lake boat; rather risky, but it worked. Afterwards the company moved ...
— Lister's Great Adventure • Harold Bindloss
... Some authors say, that Dido put a trick on the natives, by desiring to purchase of them, for her intended settlement, only so much land as an ox's hide would encompass. The request was thought too moderate to be denied. She then cut the hide into the smallest thongs; and, with them, encompassed a large ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... drink at a long, thirsty gulp, watching the young man askance with his impressive eyes. Rainham noticed for the first time that he had a curious trick of smiling with his lips only—or was it of sneering?—while the upper part of his face and his heavy ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... do it better alone, and if your old woman is in you get her out too. Ask 'er to go for a walk; that'll please Selina. I don't know what the gal does want. I thought turning teetotaler and setting a good example to you would do the trick, if ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... intent upon saving his life, And calling to mind a sharp trick of his wife, As Bruin came down, his legs clasping the tree, Caught a paw in each hand and held tight as could be: He put on a grip unto Bruin quite new, Like a vice when the blacksmith ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... the best woman in Exeter,—not to speak of her acknowledged superiority over every man in that city. Now she cared little for the glories of debate; and though she still liked her rubber, and could wake herself up to the old fire in the detection of a revoke or the claim for a second trick, her rubbers were few and far between, and she would leave her own house on an evening only when all circumstances were favourable, and with many precautions against wind and water. Some said that she was becoming old, and that she was going out like the snuff of a candle. ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope |
