"Child's play" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... old salt, who had already sailed in every latitude in every sea. A thorough sailor, this friend of tornadoes, cyclones, and typhoons, had already spent of his fifty years of life, forty at sea. To bring to in a hurricane was quite child's play to this mariner, who was never disconcerted, except by land-sickness when he was in port. His incessantly unsteady existence on a vessel's deck had endowed him with the habit of constantly balancing himself to the right ...
— Godfrey Morgan - A Californian Mystery • Jules Verne
... Athletic Park, he met his match in Charlie Walker (another of Jenny's sweethearts), who played at half-back, and the work done all through that eventful match was seen between the pair. Talk about coming in contact with "mother earth," why that was positively child's play when ...
— Scottish Football Reminiscences and Sketches • David Drummond Bone
... and enormous strength, render it impossible to even get them alongside, and there is no help for it but either to cut the line or pull up anchor and land the creature on the shore. Even then the task of despatching one of these fish is no child's play on a dark night, for they lash their long tails about with such fury that a broken leg might be the result of coming too close. In the rivers of Northern Queensland the saw-fish attain an enormous size, and the Chinese fishermen about Cooktown and Townsville often have their nets ...
— By Rock and Pool on an Austral Shore, and Other Stories • Louis Becke
... had drifted into their adventurous, nomadic life, itself a life of grown-up truancy like his own, and became one of that gypsy family. How they had taken the place of relations and household in his boyish fancy, filling it with the unsubstantial pageantry of a child's play at grown-up existence, he knew only too well. But how, from being a pet and protege, he had gradually and unconsciously asserted his own individuality and taken upon his younger shoulders not only a poet's keen appreciation of that life, but its actual responsibilities ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... bargain," said Noah. "I could put my hand on twenty good men to-morrow; half of 'em were out with me. I will pick you ten of the best. And they ought to be that, for it will be no child's play; the Injins of ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson
... Wyatt can knock him a shell together that'll win the race under everybody's nose. 'Tis a child's play, if you don't mind castin' the boat next day an' content yourself with scantlin' like a packin' case. At least, 'twould be child's play to any one but Wyatt, who can't help buildin' solid, to save his life. If the man had consulted me, I'd ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... realise, for one thing, how futile it is for Feminism to adopt the garb of masculine militancy. The militancy of the Suffragettes, which looked so brave and imposing in times of peace, disappeared like child's play at the first touch of real militancy. That was patriotic of the Suffragettes, no doubt; but it was also a necessary measure of self-preservation, for non-combatants who carry bombs about in time of war, when armed ...
— Essays in War-Time - Further Studies In The Task Of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... our guns false, and Almagro stabbed him to the heart. We charged with our lances, man against man, horse against horse. All fights I ever fought" (and the old man's eyes flashed out the ancient fire) "were child's play to that day. Our lances shivered like reeds, and we fell on with battle-axe and mace. None asked for quarter, and none gave it; friend to friend, cousin to cousin—no, nor brother, O God! to brother. We were the better armed: ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... bad look out for the morrow's journey! But I presume that your storms here are mere child's play, compared with those that we have in certain districts of Nordland!" And Alf went to his Alette, who looked inquiringly and ...
— Strife and Peace • Fredrika Bremer
... commission very much. Of course I could have thrown it up at the end of the war. But I would a great deal rather be on horseback than on foot, and I own I have no inclination to fight my way across those hills. Talana was a pretty serious business, but it was child's play to ...
— With Buller in Natal - A Born Leader • G. A. Henty
... arising out of the wrongs inflicted on him were to involve the States that had just won their independence in a civil war in comparison with which the struggle to throw off the yoke of the mother-country would appear almost as child's play. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... the reality of life. All the problems with which they had ever wrestled were as child's play to this problem; they could sit and read the deadly terror in each other's eyes. Corydon's lip was trembling, and her face was white and drawn and old. So swiftly had fled ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... mere child's play for the well-rested boys to skate to Leyden. Here they halted awhile, for Peter had an errand at ...
— Hans Brinker - or The Silver Skates • Mary Mapes Dodge
... delighted with difficulty as inferior men are delighted with ease. Fox has managed the aristocracy so long, and has bridled them with so much the hand of a master, that what he might have once considered as an achievement, he now regards as child's play. If Alexander's taming Bucephalus was a triumph for a noble boy, I scarcely think that, after passing the Granicus, he would have been proud of his fame as a horse-breaker. Fox sees, as all men see, that great changes, for either good or ill, are coming on ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... that I all but despair of making clear even the course that they ran. My diaries are filled with notes and initials and dates which I dared not at the time set down more explicitly; and my memory is often confused between them. For, indeed, my work in France was but child's play to this, neither was there any danger in ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson
... not know how I have deserved such a bounty. We have been up to the ear in the classics ever since it came. I have been greatly pleased, but most, I think, with the Hesiod,—the Titan battle quite amazed me. Gad, it was no child's play—and then the homely aphorisms at the end of the works—how adroitly you have turned them! Can he be the same Hesiod who did the Titans? ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... is mere murder. We are at the focal-point of the present battle in Foureaux Wood (near Guillemont). All my previous experiences in this war—the slaughter at Ypres and the battle in the gravel-pit at Hulluch—are the purest child's play compared with this massacre, and that is much too mild a description. I hardly think they will bring us into the fight again, for we are in a ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... placability of the victor. The communications regularly coming from the camp of the emigrants to their friends left behind in Italy were full of projects for confiscations and proscriptions, of plans for purifying the senate and the state, compared with which the restoration of Sulla was child's play, and which even the moderate men of their own party heard with horror. The frantic passion of impotence, the wise moderation of power, produced their effect. The whole mass, in whose eyes material interests were superior to political, ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... a serious business," said he. "It is no child's play. It may prove very serious. We may get through quickly, so safely, or we may so involve ourselves as never ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... i.e. the embellishment of children's books. From the days when Mulready drew the old "Butterfly's Ball" and "Peacock at Home" of our youth, to those of the delightfully Blake-like fancies of E. V. B., whose "Child's Play" has recently been re-published for the delectation of a new generation of admirers, this has always been a popular and profitable employment; but of late years it has been raised to the level of a fine art. Mr. H. S. Marks, Mr. J. D. Watson, Mr. Walter Crane, ...
— The Library • Andrew Lang
... demands another fire, I have no objection to it, and will fire at him; but as it is I shall not do so, indeed, it would be quite useless for him to do so—to point mortal weapons at me is mere child's play, they will not ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... equally certain that their efforts would have had no result but for the existence of unbearable ills. It is time, surely, to give up the notion that peoples rise in revolt merely owing to outside agitators. To revolt against the warlike Turks has never been child's play.] ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... little doubt," briskly replied Splendid. "A corps of MacNicolls, arrant knaves from all airts, worse than the Macaulays or the Gregarach themselves, do not come banging at the burgh door of Inner-aora at this uncanny hour for a child's play. Sir" (he went on, to MacLachlan), "I mind you said last market-day at Kilmichael, with no truth to back it, that you could run, shoot, or sing any Campbell ever put on hose; let a Campbell show you the way out of a bees'-bike. Take ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... me if I speak a word to Hamlin?" As Barker nodded and walked to the rails of the veranda, Demorest took Hamlin aside, "You and I," he said hurriedly, "are SINGLE men; Barker has a wife and child. This is likely to be no child's play." ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte
... arrived, yet all seemed unwilling to leave the place, where for three days men of all creeds and of no creed had met upon one common platform. In one sense the meeting was a glorious one—in another, it was mere child's play; for the Congress had been restricted to the discussion of certain topics. They were permitted to dwell on the blessings of peace, but were not allowed to say anything about the very subjects above all others that should have been ...
— Three Years in Europe - Places I Have Seen and People I Have Met • William Wells Brown
... prodigious severity. He is resolved to press it, though George Villiers told me he had promised Lyndhurst to wait for his return to town. Notwithstanding his vapouring about the Court of Chancery, and treating it as such child's play, Leach affirms (but he is disappointed and hates him) that he is a very bad judge and knows nothing of his business. 'He was a very bad advocate; why should he ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... One book a year represented say, thirty chapters, sixty or seventy thousand words. Seventy thousand words, divided by three hundred and sixty-five days, represented less than two hundred words a day. It looked like child's play—on the sheet of paper. It fairly astonished Hugh when he saw the whole question of his authorship thus reduced to its simple factors in black and white. Kate had typed the remarkable memorandum for him last year, and pasted it on a card, so that he might prop it up before ...
— In the Mist of the Mountains • Ethel Turner
... Miss Zielinski weakly protesting unheard—were so rowdy that the driver pushed his cigar-stump to the corner of his mouth, to be able to smile at ease, and flicked his old horse into a canter. For the public examination had proved as anticipated, child's play, compared with what the class had been through at Dr Pughson's hands; and its accompanying details were of an agreeable nature: the weather was not too hot; the examination-hall was light and airy; through the flung-back windows ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... "Loos was child's play to it," says one—a member of a certain immortal, or at least irrepressible Division which has taken part in every outburst of international unpleasantness since the Marne. "The final hour was absolute pandemonium. And when our new trench-mortar ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)
... sixty thousand men in Sussex, as many of you already know, while we were in Northumbria, or I trow he had never landed at all. The day after tomorrow we don our harness again to meet this new foe, but it will be child's play compared with that which is past. Shall we, who have conquered the awful Harold Hardrada, the victor of a hundred fights, fear these puny Frenchmen? They have come in a large fleet; a fishing boat will be too roomy to take them back; their bones will whiten ...
— The Rival Heirs being the Third and Last Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... other, fought with such fury that by next morning not one was left alive! And then, as may be imagined, great were the rejoicings at Prince Victor's prowess. 'It was a mere trifle!' remarked that valiant little gentleman modestly; 'when a man can shoot a mosquito with a shuttle, everything else is child's play.' ...
— Tales Of The Punjab • Flora Annie Steel
... helping them to form their life habits and to establish these habits by practice. When a child comes home from school, the mother should find out just what work is to be done before the next day and should plan the child's play and work in such a way as to include all necessary practice. If all parents would do this, the value to the work of the school and to the life of the child would ...
— The Science of Human Nature - A Psychology for Beginners • William Henry Pyle
... began to feel a little respect for the tiny fellow. Nevertheless, he wished to try him first, and took a stone in his hand and squeezed it together so that water dropped out of it. 'Do that likewise,' said the giant, 'if you have strength.' 'Is that all?' said the tailor, 'that is child's play with us!' and put his hand into his pocket, brought out the soft cheese, and pressed it until the liquid ran out of it. 'Faith,' said he, 'that was a little better, wasn't it?' The giant did not know what to say, and ...
— Grimms' Fairy Tales • The Brothers Grimm
... they had to pay right enough. But they were too much for us. Came on like lice... swarming... Couldn't kill enough... Then we got it in the neck... Lost a good few men... Gord, I've never seen such work! South Africa? No more than child's play to this 'ere game!" ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... first-class camel for our scrimmage day after to-morrow. Mustafa sent it to me this morning. I had a fight on mules once, down at Oaxaca, but that was child's play. This will be "slaughter in the pan," if the Saadat doesn't stop it somehow. Perhaps he will. If I wasn't so scared I'd wish he couldn't stop it, for it will be a way-up Barbarian scrap, the tongs ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... have to face: that these foul pests of society should escape with Professor Caldegard's discovery and master his secret—a peril to which all the dangers mankind has run since the world began from greed, bigotry, alcohol and opium are child's play. The bill of which Sir Gregory has just spoken would give us powers to lay hands on all these local branches of what Superintendent Finucane has described as 'the Dope Gang.' We know already some twenty-five or thirty ...
— Ambrotox and Limping Dick • Oliver Fleming
... fast ball over to Wilbrooke, but returning it was child's play to him, and he drove it like lightning down the centre-line before I had time to call ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 147, August 12, 1914 • Various
... way into the brush-wood we put down our insect-cases and game-bags, for the enterprise required our unimpeded agility. As long as we could cling on to the plants and shrubs, the descent was mere child's play; but we soon found ourselves treading on a reddish ferruginous soil, which some great land-slip had exposed. Sumichrast was the first to venture on this dangerous ground, which gave way under him at his third stride. Our companion rolled over the declivity, instinctively grasping ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... lonely farm. At anything of this sort I was likely to prove a sorry bungler compared with such an artist as Cairns. He was one of the most accomplished cracksmen in England, and feats which seemed impossible to me would probably be the merest child's play to him. ...
— A Rogue by Compulsion • Victor Bridges
... the Terra Nova's stokehold formed in the tropics, unless there was a good wind to blow down the one canvas shaft, was a real test of staying power, and the actual shovelling of the coal into the furnaces, one after the other, was as child's play to handling the 'devil,' as the weighty instrument used for breaking up the clinker and shaping the fire was called. The boilers were cylindrical marine or return tube boilers, the furnaces being six feet long by ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... all times" in the great art of besieging, fortifying, and defending places. Louvois had singled out Vauban at the sieges of Lille, Tournay, and Douai, which he had directed in chief under the king's own eye. He ordered him to render the places he had just taken impregnable. "This is no child's play," said Vauban on setting about the fortifications of Dunkerque, "and I would rather lose my life than hear said of me some day what I hear said of the men who have preceded me." Louvois' admiration was unmixed when he went to examine the works. "The achievements of the Romans which have ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... for all purposes of cultivation, than the lands adjoining it, (many of which are worth, for market gardening, over one thousand dollars per acre,) and that it might afford profitable employment, and give homes, to all of the industrious poor of the city. The work of reclaiming it would be child's play, compared with the draining of the Harlaem Lake in Holland, where over 40,000 acres, submerged to an average depth of thirteen feet, have been pumped dry, and made to do their part toward the ...
— Draining for Profit, and Draining for Health • George E. Waring
... called in the issue of this Rebellion would be speedy and favorable," said a Captain in musical tones, "and I can't think but that this costly child's play will drive the nation into their use much sooner than many expect. Let them understand that they are the real beneficiaries of this war, and they will not stay their hands. And why shouldn't we use them? 'They are one of the means that God and nature have placed in our hands,' ...
— Red-Tape and Pigeon-Hole Generals - As Seen From the Ranks During a Campaign in the Army of the Potomac • William H. Armstrong
... bales the water out of the hole; another takes the bucket and empties it into the tray of the machine; while a third rocks, supplies the machine with water, and empties the tray of the large stones. This, it will be seen, is no child's play: your gold-hunter is no idle wanderer, but a hard-working man, subjected to a thousand discomforts unknown in ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 430 - Volume 17, New Series, March 27, 1852 • Various
... "That would be child's play," replied Carlos. "We need fear nothing but the guardians of public safety, the criminal police; and so long as that is not set in motion, we ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... veils began to drape the eastern ramparts where the forests thickened and swept up the slopes, these riders began to come in across the range, driving the herds before them. Running cattle in Lost Valley was no child's play. Any small bunch of cows left out at night was not there by dawn. Eternal vigilance was the price of safety, and then they were not always safe. Witness poor Harkness, a year ago shot in the back and left to die alone—his band run ...
— Tharon of Lost Valley • Vingie E. Roe
... Scotland. They blew out the grease boxes of the trucks; but their performance, on the whole, was amateurish. For they blew up, with dynamite, the masonry of many bridges and contented themselves that the girders lay in the river below. But this was child's play to our Sappers and Miners. With hand jacks they lifted the girders and piled up sleepers, one by one beneath, until the girder was lifted to rail level again. Now any engineer can tell you that the only way to destroy a bridge is to cut the girder. ...
— Sketches of the East Africa Campaign • Robert Valentine Dolbey
... It was no child's play carrying that heavy man through the darkening forest, for unusual care had to be taken constantly, lest a stumble occur that would cause him to cry out ...
— The Outdoor Chums at Cabin Point - or The Golden Cup Mystery • Quincy Allen
... Duke of Wellington and Achilles and other fellows like that you can't expect any team-play. Each man is thinking about himself all the time. Hercules could walk right through 'em, and, when they begin to pose, it's mere child's play for him. The only chap that put up any game against us at all was Samson, and I tell you, now that his hair's grown again, he's a demon on the gridiron. But we divided up our force to meet that difficulty. Hercules put the rest of our eleven on to Samson, while he took care, personally, of ...
— Olympian Nights • John Kendrick Bangs
... knowed it. Bit numb like with the cold. But you keep a good heart, and I'll have you out. It's only a bit o' work, and no fear of caving in on us. Just child's play like. There's one arm clear, and a bit of your side, and ...
— To Win or to Die - A Tale of the Klondike Gold Craze • George Manville Fenn
... buckled to with anchor-cable drag-ropes—a hundred pair of straining men for each great, lumbering gun. Over the sand they went at a romp. Over the rocks they had to take care; and in the dense, obstructing scrub they had to haul through by main force. But this was child's play to what awaited them in the slimy, shifting, and boulder-strewn bog they had to pass before reaching the ...
— The Great Fortress - A Chronicle of Louisbourg 1720-1760 • William Wood
... face pass from amiability to sternness; he hoped I was not beginning to idle. I could not call my wandering thoughts together. I had hardly any patience with the serious work of life which, now that it stood between me and my desire, seemed to me child's play, ugly ...
— Dubliners • James Joyce
... known of them, was a brave soldier, and had served with distinction as an officer in the French service; he was one of the excellent swordsmen of Europe; had fought several duels in France, where it is no child's play to fight a duel; but had never unsheathed his sword for single combat, but in defence of the feeble and insulted—he was kind and open-hearted, but of too great simplicity; he had once ten thousand pounds left him, all of which he lent to a friend, who disappeared and never returned a ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... strongly and deeply scholarly and critical as Strauss's—in fact, the real Straussian Genius. In a moment of unlimited frankness, Strauss himself indeed adds: "Merck was always in my thoughts, calling out, 'Don't produce such child's play again; others can do that too!'" That was the voice of the real Straussian genius, which also asked him what the worth of his newest, innocent, and lightly equipped modern Philistine's testament was. Others can do that too! ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... a thunder-clap and shook to the winds the few remaining shreds of hope. General Wise was ill in bed; and the defense—conducted by a militia colonel with less than one thousand raw troops—was but child's play to the immense armada with heaviest metal that ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... excited by the thought of what they would accomplish, and so intent upon his scheme that he rattled on with explanations of how this or that might be accomplished, until Ralph began to look upon sinking an oil well as mere child's play, and quite convinced that it could easily ...
— Ralph Gurney's Oil Speculation • James Otis
... off our designs for a child's play," said D'Effiat impatiently, and wrapping himself in a cloak which was thrown over him. "Remember the lines we formerly so frequently quoted, 'Justum et tenacem Propositi viruna'; these iron words are stamped upon my brain. Yes; let the universe crumble around me, its wreck shall ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... Nevertheless he wished to try him first, and took a stone in his hand and squeezed it together so that the water dropped out of it. "Do that likewise," said the giant, "if thou hast strength." "Is that all?" said the tailor, "that is child's play with us!" and put his hand into his pocket, brought out the soft cheese, and pressed it until the liquid ran out of it. "Faith," said he, "that was a ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... a search. On these occasions, it is needless to say, no liquor was found on board the Sea Fox. To discover his enemies by the method of inviting pursuit and then doubling on his track as Reynard does was child's play to him. In each town he had an accomplice who dare not, if ...
— Pocket Island - A Story of Country Life in New England • Charles Clark Munn
... hundred and twenty who has a run left in him. Reckless of the defence of their own goal, on they come across the level big-side ground, the ball well down amongst them, straight for our goal, like the column of the Old Guard up the slope at Waterloo. All former charges have been child's play to this. Warner and Hedge have met them, but still on they come. The bull-dogs rush in for the last time; they are hurled over or carried back, striving hand, foot, and eyelids. Old Brooke comes sweeping round the skirts of the play, and turning short round, picks out the very heart of the scrummage, ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... are manifested Nature's Laws seemed to be transcended, and the result is called "a miracle." The occult tradition tells us that Jesus was a past-master in the knowledge and application of the occult forces of nature, and that even the wonders that He wrought during His Jewish ministry were but as child's play when compared with those that He might have manifested had He seen fit to do so. In fact, it is believed that some of His greatest wonder-workings have never been recorded, for He always impressed upon His chosen followers the advisability of refraining from laying too much stress on these ...
— Mystic Christianity • Yogi Ramacharaka
... had seemed to him so devoted that he had often despaired of his boast to his patron that he would divide the wife from her husband, and restore her to her family. Now, if Tanaka's story were true, his task would be child's play. A woman charged with jealousy becomes like a weapon primed and cocked. If Ito could succeed in making Asako jealous, then he knew that any stray spark of misunderstanding would blast a black gulf between husband and wife, ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... in Christianity. So, with others, I hoped that some remedy might be applied to such great evils, but I was cruelly deceived. For, before the former errors had been extirpated, far more intolerable ones crept in, compared to which the others seemed child's play. ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... sternly, and she was now as white as the snowy lace about her neck, "there shall be no more of this child's play. You shall not ruin your life by any such foolishness. What will Vane Cameron think of me for granting him the permission he craved? It was equivalent to admitting that he would find no obstacle in his path. ...
— His Heart's Queen • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... Similarly, if you are in doubt whether the pipes from water source to house are below the frost line, a carpet of leaves about two inches thick on top of the ground along the course of the water pipe, will obviate any such unhappy event. Thawing a frozen pipe plainly visible in the well is child's play compared to the task of arguing with any underground. Once, such pipes had to wait for nature. Today, they can be thawed very skillfully with special electrical equipment, but not cheaply. The standard charge ranges from $20 up, ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley
... went on, I saw the terror spread from one to another. Voices which earlier in the day had been raised in song and jest grew silent. Great reckless fellows of Maignan's following, who had an oath and a blow for all comers, and to whom the deepest ford seemed to be child's play, rode with drooping heads and knitted brows; or scanned with ill-concealed anxiety the strange haze before us, through which the roofs of the town, and here and there a low hill or line of poplars, rose to plainer ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... battles of words with his beautiful helpmate. Stolid and unimpressible as he was, he can hardly have been impervious to the effects of the verbal venom with which she had constantly stung him. But all this had been mere child's play in comparison with her fury on being informed that, without so much as consulting her, her husband had definitely settled a match for her only child with a portionless knight. A new weapon was lying ready to her hand, and ...
— The Curious Case of Lady Purbeck - A Scandal of the XVIIth Century • Thomas Longueville
... then was to be able to speak with the tongue of John Most,—that I, too, might thus reach the masses. Oh, for the naivety of Youth's enthusiasm! It is the time when the hardest thing seems but child's play. It is the only period in life worth while. Alas! This period is but of short duration. Like Spring, the STURM UND DRANG period of the propagandist brings forth growth, frail and delicate, to be matured or killed according to its powers of resistance against ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman
... "Child's play—but it will serve. The cook shall come for your orders. Have it ready before the drinking begins or the men will not know whether you have larks or peacocks in ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... knew little of what was going on in France, and therefore failed to understand that the desperadoes now in power at Paris were wielding a centralized despotism, compared with which that of Louis XIV was child's play. As to the Phoenix-like survival of French credit, it is inexplicable even to those who have witnessed the wonders wrought by Thiers in 1870-3. All that can be said is that the Jacobins killed the goose that laid the golden egg, and yet the golden eggs ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... think mother had some cause to be alarmed when she saw Miss Du Prel, if she wants to keep us in a chastened mood, at home. It seems as if all of me were in high carnival. Life is raised to a higher power. I feel nearly omnipotent. Epics and operas are child's play to me! It is true I have produced comparatively few; but, oh, those that are to come! I feel fit for anything, from pitch-and-toss to manslaughter. I think of the two, I rather lean to the manslaughter. Oh, I don't mean it in the facetious sense! that would be a terrible downfall from my ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... it means. These things are not child's play—not today. You could get twenty years in prison for things you'll say if you rush out there now. (she laughs) You laugh because you're ignorant. Do you know that in America today there are women in our prisons for saying no more than you've ...
— Plays • Susan Glaspell
... mere child's play to this wonderful woman. She shewed me the calcined matter, and said that whenever I liked she would instruct me as to the process. I next saw the Tree of Diana of the famous Taliamed, whose pupil she was. His real name was ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... said. "To have planned out the whole thing? For carrying it out was mere child's play. He had twenty-four hours in which to put his plan into execution. Why, what was there to do? Firstly, to go to a local printer in some out-of-the-way part of the town and get him to print a few cards with the high-sounding name. ...
— The Old Man in the Corner • Baroness Orczy
... to move at first, but it was child's play compared to the toil through which the young midshipman had gone when he attacked the wall. First one yielded, then another, and, as they were dragged out, the men cheered, and passed them back to ...
— Cutlass and Cudgel • George Manville Fenn
... the reply, for Eradicate had been on so many trips with Tom, and had had so much to do with airships, that to merely start one was child's play for him. ...
— Tom Swift in Captivity • Victor Appleton
... child's play. We marched out of the tent all abreast and called on the ten boys to surrender, making them put up their hands until Coutlass had found their five rifles and ammunition. They were too astonished even to ask questions. Accustomed to Schillingschen's despotic orders, they obeyed ours silently, ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... I want it for," remarked the Writer encouragingly, "child's play, and the sort of tune a child would sing whilst ...
— The Tale of Lal - A Fantasy • Raymond Paton
... of a Negro on the social question as between the races was no child's play with Tiara. It struck at the very root of the deepest convictions of her soul, and she was firmly resolved to allow no Negro into the inner circle of her friendship of whose views on that question she was ignorant. ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs
... Flynn. "Easy enough, only child's play, but you won't earn more than three dollars a ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... the Southern girl, starting up the cramped old New England stairway to her room. "It was child's play, but it was very sweet of them, and especially ...
— Bylow Hill • George Washington Cable
... only a certain amount of money for the venture; it was our first visit to Canada, and we knew no one. We carried credentials, however, from the Marquis of Ripon and other reputable persons. If we had had experience as commercial travellers, this would have been child's play. But our education had been in an English school and university; and when finally we sat at breakfast at the Halifax hotel we felt like fish out of water. Such success as we obtained subsequently I attribute entirely to what then seemed to me my colleague's colonial "cheek." He insisted ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... passage between wall of ice and wall of water, was what the mariners feared. The other great danger was just a plain crush, getting nipped between two icepans rearing and plunging like fighting stallions, with the ice blocks going off like pistol shots or smashed glass. No child's play is such navigating either for the old sailing vessels of the fur traders or the modern ice-breakers propelled by steam! Yet, the old sailing vessels and the whaling fleets have navigated these straits for ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... world had turned to fire—his world—and he looked out upon it in dazed wonder. He could no longer fight this fire, restrain it, conquer it; he could only go out under the bursting shells and strive to minimize by some fraction the destruction; but it was only child's play, this work of his which had been a man's business. And there was no mistaking the fact that this world was now too much for him. He was a brave man; they told me of things he had done; but his little cosmos had gone ...
— They Shall Not Pass • Frank H. Simonds
... "I will not turn back, whatever comes. This is but child's play, but a speck beside what I mean to do. True, I came in the dark, but I will go in the light. I shall not leave them behind, these poor folk; they shall come with me. I have money, France is waiting, the people are sick ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... vein of irony, which Swift or Echard never surpassed, and the scorching invective of which he was so consummate a master, would have been well employed in handing down to posterity a scene of villainy to which the frauds of Somers and the stratagems of Weston were mere child's play. We might then have had, from the most enlightened man of his age, a commentary on the statute 1st James First, which would have neutralized its mischief, and spared a hecatomb of victims. His resistless ridicule would, perhaps, have accomplished at once what was ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... Lille. At the angle of its junction with the main dyke of the river's bank, a strong fortress called Holy Cross (Santa Cruz) had been constructed. That fortress and the whole line of the Kowenstyn were held in the iron grip of Mondragon. To wrench it from him would be no child's play. Five new strong redoubts upon the dyke, and five or six thousand Spaniards established there, made the enterprise more formidable than it would have been in June. It had been better to sacrifice the twelve thousand oxen. Twelve thousand Hollanders might now be slaughtered, and ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... to the travesty of government and the mockery of civilization under which we are being throttled! The bayonet is now in the hands of a brutal negro militia. The tyranny of military martinets was child's play to this. As I answered your call this morning I was stopped and turned back in the street by the drill of a company of negroes under the command of a vicious scoundrel named Gus who was my former slave. He is the captain of this company. ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon
... a materialistic scientist once announced to an astonished world, are child's play compared with the mysteries of nature.[1] He was completely wrong, of course, yet there was every excuse for his mistake. For, as he himself tells us in effect, he found everywhere in that created nature which ...
— Paradoxes of Catholicism • Robert Hugh Benson
... uncording of the latter intensified the expectation of the Eskimo to boiling point, and when the brown paper was removed, and a roll of something with a strange, not to say bad, smell was displayed, they boiled over in a series of exclamations to which the former "huks" and "hos" were mere child's play. But when the roll was unrolled, and assumed a flat shape not unlike the skin of a huge walrus, they gave a shout. Then, when the Captain, opening a smaller package, displayed a pair of bellows like a concertina, they gave a gasp. When he applied these to a hole in the flat ...
— The Giant of the North - Pokings Round the Pole • R.M. Ballantyne
... the lesson she had received: at last, Adolphe started up from his position, walked a step or two into the middle of the room, thrust his right hand into his bosom; and said abruptly, "Agatha, this is child's play; we are deceiving each other; we are deceiving ourselves; we would appear to be calm when there ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... and more teaching us, is the great central sun which moveth all things, which operates all physical changes, whose beams are all but omnipotent, and yet fall so quietly that they do not disturb the motes that dance in their path. Thunder and lightning are child's play compared with the energy that goes to make the falling dews and quiet rains. The power of the sunshine is the root power of all force which works in material things. And so we turn, with the symbol in our hands, to the throne of God, and when He says, 'Not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit,' ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... which had been reserved for you; you have been unwilling to step over the profane threshold and to enter the world, that cavern, I ought to say, in which I am now assailed, tossed about like a frail bark during a tempest. Nay, the anger of the waves of the sea compared to that of the passions is mere child's play. Happy friend, who art ignorant of what I have learned. Happy friend, whose eyes have not yet measured the abyss into which mine are ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... M'ganwazam was treacherous and that he might have to fight to regain possession of his wife. He wished that Mugambi, Sheeta, Akut, and the balance of the pack were with him, for he realized that single-handed it would be no child's play to bring Jane safely from the clutches of two such scoundrels as Rokoff ...
— The Beasts of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... the day time; when, try as we might, we could not count on avoiding for our hiding place the scene of some labourer's toil or perhaps the covert of some child's play. We slept by turns with one always on guard. It was difficult indeed for the guard not to neglect his duty, so utterly weary were we. The lying position we needs must retain all day long aided that tendency, ...
— The Escape of a Princess Pat • George Pearson
... accustomed to say that his whole early life had been one of prodigious and continual study, and that he could afford to repose in after years. Paganini's knowledge of music was profound and exact, and the most difficult music was mere child's play to him. Pasini, a well-known painter, living at Parma, did not believe the stories told of Paganini's ability to play the most difficult music at sight. Being the possessor of a valuable Stradiuarius violin, he challenged our artist to play, at first hand, a manuscript concerto ...
— Great Violinists And Pianists • George T. Ferris
... those at the bottle factory, and the sweat-shop seemed, at first, mere child's play. She arrived at eight o'clock, helped Susan in the basement kitchen, until Miss Bobinet awoke, then went aloft to officiate at the elaborate process of that lady's toilet. For twenty years Susan had been chief ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice
... subordinating Shylock to the Comedy Part. If that were meant to be so, Williams ['the divine Williams,' as some Frenchman called Shakespeare] miscalculated, throwing so much of his very finest writing into the Jew's Mouth, the downright human Nature of which makes all the Love- Story Child's play, though ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald to Fanny Kemble (1871-1883) • Edward FitzGerald
... you are impertinent! Do you mean to go any further? We are a fighting race, we Brodies. Oh, you may laugh, sir! But 'tis no child's play to jest us on our Deacon, or, for that matter, on our Deacon's chamber either. It was his father's before him: he works in it by day and sleeps in it by night; and scarce anything it contains but is the labour of his hands. Do you see this ...
— The Plays of W. E. Henley and R. L. Stevenson
... gave me a proof of your sincerity," answered Marzio, in low tones, "I would do much for you. Yes, I would give you Lucia—and the business too, when I am too old to work. But it must be a serious proof—no child's play." ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... and domestic, and those of a quasi-religious Friendly Society, resembling something between their 'Band of Hope' and their 'Antediluvian Buffaloes.' The English have a passion for this kind of child's play, and are absurdly impatient of official surveillance. Their incorrigible sentimentality is soothed by such movements as those of the Canadian preachers and The Citizens; but even the rudiments of discipline or efficient ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... When she espied it she gave a yell, such as I never before heard, and never wish to hear again. For once, when I was in Silesia, in my youth, I saw one of the enemy's soldiers spear a child before its mother's face, and I thought that a fearful shriek which the mother gave; but her cry was child's play to the cry of old Lizzie. All my hair stood on end, and her own red hair grew so stiff that it was like the twigs of the broom whereon she lay; and then she howled, "That is the spirit Dudaim, whom the accursed Sheriff has sent to me—the sacrament, for the love of God, the sacrament!—I ...
— The Amber Witch • Wilhelm Meinhold
... with a smile. Then changing his tone in absolute and impressive seriousness, 'But this is all nothing but child's play,' he said, 'compared with what is involved in the matter of this reservoir. The real origin of it was its needfulness to the ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... he had had for some time, he appeared determined to make the most of it. He kept the lead for full half an hour, frequently neighing as if in triumph and derision. I thought of John Gilpin's celebrated ride, but that was child's play to this. The proverb says, 'The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong,' and so it proved in the present instance. My mustang was obliged to carry weight, while his competitors were as free as nature had made them. A beautiful bay, who had trod close upon my heels the whole ...
— David Crockett: His Life and Adventures • John S. C. Abbott
... illness or fear in order to be taken into the mother's bed. Then she pretends to be asleep, talks in her sleep, throws herself about in her sleep, that she may be able to do everything without punishment and without being blamed, finally plays the mother in a manner which corresponds completely to child's play. Also later, before and after wandering in the bright moonlight, she produces specially deep sleep and first as if in an obsession tries the door repeatedly to see if it is closed. I see in this, naturally ...
— Sleep Walking and Moon Walking - A Medico-Literary Study • Isidor Isaak Sadger
... order to save a fellow being from drowning is one of the most heroic acts that one may be called upon to perform, yet how many of us have the presence of mind and courage to act in such an emergency? To rescue a person from drowning is no child's play, even for the best swimmers; it requires pluck, nerve and stamina. Of course, I allude to rescues which take place some distance from shore. Many a daring swimmer has been clutched and dragged down to death simply because he ...
— Swimming Scientifically Taught - A Practical Manual for Young and Old • Frank Eugen Dalton and Louis C. Dalton
... sepulcher in this rock-ribbed landscape,' says French, as Jack Moore comes up, kind o' apol'gisin' for his profane voylence at Old Monte; 'framin' up a tomb, I say, in this yere rock-ribbed landscape ain't no child's play, an' I'm not allowin' none for that homicide Monte to put no sech tasks on me. He knows the Wolfville roole. Every gent skins his own polecats an' plants his ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis
... fish, the mainstay of the inhabitants, who were reduced by the disaster, directly or indirectly, to less than five-sixths of their former strength; and third to that of Galungung, in 1822, which devastated such an immense area in Java; but all the eruptions known besides were as mere child's play to the terrible one ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 841, February 13, 1892 • Various
... of a child's play-life will involve, in addition to the trained intelligence of the parents, provision for space in the house and also outdoors, willingness to subordinate our peace and our pleasure to the child's play at times, a reasonable though ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope
... fresh riot, execution, conspiracy, bankruptcy, but a sign—that the fruit was growing ripe for the plucking? Even Heraclian's rebellion, and Orestes' suspected conspiracy, were to the younger and coarser Goths a sort of child's play, at which they could look on and laugh, and bet, from morning till night; while to the more cunning heads, such as Wulf and Smid, they were but signs of the general rottenness—new cracks in those great walls over which they intended, ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... think for myself and make it profitable to others, if I can find the chance. Why, Pop, this editorial game is child's play!" ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... the house. He immediately saw, as he had expected, that a man had leaped out of the lower branches. There were the two deep prints of moccasined feet; two hand-prints also where he had fallen forward. He had no doubt come down faster than he had intended. It was child's play after that to follow his headlong course through the bush. Soon Stonor saw that he had slackened his pace—no doubt at the moment when Stonor turned back to the shack. Still the track was written clear. It made a wide detour through the bush, and came back to the door of the room ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner
... white man sat with supreme indifference at a table, and in front of him three most unhappy chiefs squatted in the grass, the shame of their irons hidden under the blanket folds. Audacity is truly a part of the equipment of genius. To have rescued the North Wind and his friends would have been child's play; to have retired from the council with threats of war, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... moments in which a woman tries dissimulation in presence of her husband, you have the spirit of a sphinx in seeing through her, you will plainly observe that your custom-house restrictions are mere child's play to her. ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... without making further complications and embarrassing us. He seems to know an amazing amount regarding Egypt and all relating to it. Perhaps he wouldn't mind translating a little bit of hieroglyphic. It is child's play to him. What ...
— The Jewel of Seven Stars • Bram Stoker
... an easy shot by daylight, if there had been no baby to consider. But there was that little bundle of humanity, the man's own flesh and blood, and a bullet in order to pierce the bear's heart must strike within a few inches of the baby's head. The task that King Gessler set William Tell, was child's play compared with this. To shoot might mean to kill his own child, and not to shoot might mean a still more terrible death ...
— Black Bruin - The Biography of a Bear • Clarence Hawkes
... ill-humour at the change, and strove to let the plan stand as it was, and for Elzevir to go down the well. Things that were settled, he said, should remain settled; he was not one for changes; it was a man's task this and no child's play; a boy would not have his senses about him, and might overlook the place. I fixed my eyes on Elzevir to let him know what I thought, and Master Turnkey's words fell lightly on his ears as water on a duck's back. Then this ill-eyed man tried to work upon my fears; saying that the ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner
... Boer War was child's play compared with this. Willy has set the whole world ablaze. All the same, I agree with you that England is getting her eyes open at last. But it's a pity the people at home didn't realise first off that forcing the Dardanelles ...
— On Land And Sea At The Dardanelles • Thomas Charles Bridges
... the rear guard, armed with bows and javelins. It was no child's play, in those days, ...
— The Blue Flower, and Others • Henry van Dyke
... most vivid recollections of hearing about Java were, in connection with Moca, together with eggs and toast and the usual accompaniments of the breakfast table, but we were all in for a revelation. The cultivation of the hillsides in Japan is child's play in comparison with the miles upon miles of hills, plateaus and even mountains, all in flourishing rice fields, coffee ...
— The Log of the Empire State • Geneve L.A. Shaffer
... about important questions, and this importunissimus and audacissimus juvenis comes and hinders me. It is no child's play to have to deal with these transcendentalibus. I wouldn't have had it happen ...
— Comedies • Ludvig Holberg
... should not be surprised if Mr. Retief has overreached himself this time. A thousand head of cattle cannot easily be hidden, or, for that matter, disposed of. Neither can they travel fast; and as for tracking, well," with a shrug, "in this case it should be child's play." ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... as I will, nor do I fear that thou wilt ever be my bane; but the grey old carle, thy father, Snorri, I fear in good sooth, and his counsels that have brought most men to their knees: and for thee, thou shouldst turn thy mind to such things alone as thou mayst get done, nor is it child's play ...
— The Story of Grettir The Strong • Translated by Eirikr Magnusson and William Morris
... cold."—"I don't care. I am choking!" exclaimed James Wait in a clear tone.—"Oh, no, my son," said the boatswain, desperately, "you don't go till we all go on this fine night."—"You will see yet many a worse," said Mr. Baker, cheerfully.—"It's no child's play, sir!" answered the boatswain. "Some of us further aft, here, are in a pretty bad way."—"If the blamed sticks had been cut out of her she would be running along on her bottom now like any decent ship, an' giv' us all a chance," ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... in play, gives a correct indication of Browning's feeling, fully shared in by his wife, towards the religious movement in England which was altering the face of the established Church. "Puseyism" was for them a kind of child's play which unfortunately had religion for its play-ground; they viewed it with a superior smile, in which there was more of pity than of anger. Both of them, though one was a writer for the stage and the other could read Madame Bovary without flinching ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... the verge of the Islamgee plateau whilst the remaining cannons and waggons were being drawn up. The wonderful work of dragging up the 16,000 pounds weight of "Sebastopol" once over—though some of the cannons were also of a considerable size,—the rest of the operation was only child's play, and his Majesty, ...
— A Narrative of Captivity in Abyssinia - With Some Account of the Late Emperor Theodore, - His Country and People • Henry Blanc
... in the dark, give you some good advice, try to make yourself clear on two points. First, as to the proper limits of language for the investigation of past and prehistoric times. As yet, no one has known how to handle these gigantic materials; what Jacob Grimm has lately attempted with them is child's play. It is no longer of any use, as a Titan in intention, but confused as to aim, and uncertain in method,—it is no longer of any use to put down dazzling examples which demonstrate nothing, or at most only that something ought to be there to be ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... on speed. Not only was the dusky thief pushing his animals to the utmost, but Kit Carson knew he would give them little rest night or day. He was familiar with the route to California and the pursuit would be no child's play. ...
— The Life of Kit Carson • Edward S. Ellis
... limits to the gratification of his desires and to abstain from reckless over-indulgence. With such a training later on even the temptations of alcoholic beverages would lose their danger. Not less injurious than the strong drinks are the cards. All gambling from the child's play to the stock exchange is ruinous for the psychophysical equilibrium. The same is true of any overuse of coffee and tea and tobacco, and as a matter of course still more the habitual use of the drugs like the popular headache powders and sleeping medicines. ...
— Psychotherapy • Hugo Muensterberg
... certainly have things well fixed," said Ellen grudgingly. "What easy little stairs! It's like child's play going up. I suppose that's one consolation for having such a little playhouse affair to live in; you don't have to climb up far. Well, we've come to stay two days if you want us. Herbert said he could spare that much time off, and we're going to stop in Thayerville on the way back and ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... had never worked so brilliantly as it was working now. The problems involved in his clients' affairs were child's play to him. He took them apart and put them together again with a careless, confident, infallible perspicacity that amazed his colleagues and his opponents. And, as Frank Crawford had pointed out, he took a savagely contemptuous ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... his love for that girl was consecrated by that hero's sacrifice. There was a light of high purpose in the brave man's eyes; he was accepting his life and hers at the cost of another's, and the terms were such as made him feel the meaning of his existence. It was to be no child's play, no blind hunt for pleasure or wealth or fame, but a life with a purpose and meaning, ...
— A Prisoner of Morro - In the Hands of the Enemy • Upton Sinclair
... farce!' He strung himself for a mad gallop of wrath, gave her a shudder, and relapsed. 'No, no, you're wiser, you're a better girl than that. Write it. I must have it written-here, come! The worst is over; the rest is child's play. Come, take the pen, I'll guide ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... "educational forces" would need to "redeem" themselves so as not to be "a greater laughing stock than we have ever been before." But if the weakness lies merely in our practise, not yet having been able to attain to our ideals, then, tho serious, it would be but child's play, comparatively speaking, to put ourselves right. We should need to take courage, redouble our efforts, and all that, but should not need to start ...
— On the Firing Line in Education • Adoniram Judson Ladd
... "This really is child's play for me, madame. It won't take more than a week to find out who you are, and possibly, if you have any clews at all to your identity, I may be able to solve this mystery in ...
— The Enchanted Typewriter • John Kendrick Bangs
... usual character, for he had been very little given to boasting hitherto. But then being strangely puffed up, and his head heated, he would not limit his fortune with Parthia and Syria; but looking on the actions of Lucullus against Tigranes and the exploits of Pompey against Mithridates as but child's play, he proposed to himself in his hopes to pass as far as Bactria and India, and the utmost ocean. Not that he was called upon by the decree which appointed him to his office to undertake any expedition against the Parthians, but it was well ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... power-pack-grid-suit combo that made a sleeping Buddha of the servo-tracer on the night of Jason's call at Lonnie's mansion; bollixed up the elaborate guards of the Peiping Temple of Mankind; and, when Jason so openly displayed suspicion of the genius, made child's play of what the newspapers headlined as "Scientist's Amazing ...
— Zero Data • Charles Saphro
... state of things that had given it origin. This was all well enough; but, for a girl like Priscilla and a woman like Zenobia to jostle one another in their love of a man like Hollingsworth, was likely to be no child's play. ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... clerk; "Abe Lincoln and Jefferson Davis have both found out by this time that this war won't be any child's play. It'll last a couple of years yet, or ...
— Chasing an Iron Horse - Or, A Boy's Adventures in the Civil War • Edward Robins
... etceteras would not be enough to imply all you must know). But suppose the plate were only a pen drawing: take your pen—your finest—and just try to copy the leaves that entangle the head of Io, and her head itself; remembering always that the kind of work required here is mere child's play compared to that of fine figure engraving. Nevertheless, take a small magnifying glass to this—count the dots and lines that gradate the nostrils and the edges of the facial bone; notice how the light is left on ...
— Ariadne Florentina - Six Lectures on Wood and Metal Engraving • John Ruskin
... "This is child's play, Fanny," he said. "You may reject me: to that I have nothing further to say, for I am but an indifferent wooer; but you ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... foreman, "this must be settled in some way. This is no child's play. You can't keep eleven men here, trifling with them, giving no ...
— Eli - First published in the "Century Magazine" • Heman White Chaplin
... alert, competent, but underneath this demeanor there went an unceasing effort of computation and reckoning to which the computation and reckoning on the first night of his agreement with Leverich was as a child's play with toy bricks is to the building of ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 31, No. 1, May 1908 • Various
... regions of the consciousness between two beings of whom one will be the dupe of the other, though it keeps on this side of wickedness; one of those dark and comic dramas to which that of Tartuffe is mere child's play,—dramas that do not enter the scenic domain, although they are natural, conceivable, and even justifiable by necessity; dramas which may be characterized as not vice, only the ...
— The Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan • Honore de Balzac
... hours the battle continued. They had had a long and wearying march and were looking forward to a good breakfast, but instead they had to go straight into the fight, and it was twelve hours before that breakfast came. Men who fought at Dargai and Omdurman tell us that these were mere child's play compared with the fight of the Modder River. Hour after hour the firing was maintained, until in many cases the ammunition was all expended. And yet there was no relief. The pitiless rain of bullets from the Boer fortifications ...
— From Aldershot to Pretoria - A Story of Christian Work among Our Troops in South Africa • W. E. Sellers
... does come? It won't swallow you. A ducking more or less is no such great matter. You are not made of sugar or salt. Many's the drenching I've had in the States, and none the worse for it. Yet our rains are no child's play neither." ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... me with uplifted finger, and not a syllable; and down-stairs he led me, stocking soles close against the skirting, two feet to each particular step. It must have seemed child's play to Raffles; the old precautions were obviously assumed for my entertainment; but I confess that to me it was all refreshingly exciting—for once without a risk of durance if we came to grief! With scarcely a creak we reached the hall, and could have walked out of the ...
— A Thief in the Night • E. W. Hornung
... to be, to get along in their business. It's no child's play, smuggling Chinese. And it's no ...
— The Boy Ranchers on Roaring River - or Diamond X and the Chinese Smugglers • Willard F. Baker
... Buckland's back, I would ride him straight at it. He never bothered to go to the right or left of it. The old horse would take it in his stride and sail over it without rapping it. Wire fences were child's play to him; he got over them just as easily as he negotiated ...
— The Chronicles of a Gay Gordon • Jose Maria Gordon
... find it hard to believe that they are not wax flowers grown under a glass case. When we see some of the tropic birds, with their tiny bodies attached to gigantic beaks, we do not feel that they are freaks of the fierce humour of Creation. We almost believe that they are toys out of a child's play-box, artificially carved and artificially coloured. So it is with the great convulsion of Nature which was known as Byronism. The volcano is not an extinct volcano now; it is the dead stick of a rocket. It is the remains not of a natural ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... handle them should they cross my path. You shall come with me to-night, my plans are laid; you will never regret it. You would soon tire of the child's play here, no excitement; after the ball I away from Rose Cottage. Our life at New York and elsewhere will be one long draught of champagne. You must come with me to-night, or look you—" and he hissed the words between his ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny |
